


Beneath a Sky of Orange Leaves

by Zurela



Series: Orange Leaves [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Bonding, Deaf Character, Homesickness, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Panic Attacks, Self-Sacrifice, Sick Character, Slow Burn, Wilderness Survival, these boys are a mess but they care about each other a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-11-21 18:59:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11363610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zurela/pseuds/Zurela
Summary: Thanks to the druids, Keith and Lance are launched through a corrupted portal and crash onto a mysterious planet. Stranded, alone, and with no one else to rely on but each other, they quickly realize that rivalries don't last long in survival situations.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've had this idea cooking for a bit and I'm really excited about it! Because I live to torture the characters I love in order to force them to support each other and then fall in love. Is that so wrong?

The ability to make a magical portal to transport you anywhere in the universe was useful, for sure. It got Voltron out of a lot of bad situations, and was even responsible for getting the paladins to the castle in the first place. But relying on them too much made them a crutch, and when a crutch is pulled away, there’s bound to be a crash.

It almost became routine, after a while. The Galra come, the paladins go out in their lions, the fight becomes more dangerous than expected, and they flee through a portal. Of course, there were small victories in between those instances, and sometimes major victories, but the stomach-lurching feeling of being dragged through a portal to some unknown corner of the universe became familiar, recognizable.

Then Haggar showed up, and showed them that she could corrupt their portals, and the game changed. So long as they were careful, they would be safe. But then again, there really was no such thing as being careful in the midst of battle.  
__________

The Galra arrived, as always, with the sudden arrival of a massive fleet, too overwhelming to possibly be taken on by only five people. And like always, the paladins went out anyways, ready to fight their lives away for a war they had no part in to begin with.

Before the battle even got too far, Allura had already recognized that things weren’t going to end well and began to prepare a portal. The paladins were being held apart by the onslaught of attacks being launched their way, and it was only a matter of time before the castle came under attack as well.

Only the Galra had caught onto this game, and now they were prepared.

Haggar was there the moment the first portal opened, filling it with dark energy, and Allura could feel some sense of a horrible unknown consume it.

“Don’t go through that portal!” she shouted over the communication channel. “They’ve corrupted it!”

“Got it,” Shiro said. “We’ll try and keep her distracted until you can get a functional one open.”

The paladins then focused all their attacks on the main ship, doing whatever they could to block the Galra from the castle. But whatever magic Haggar had within her was brutal and fierce, and she blew right through them, turning each portal to freedom into some swirling menace.

“Why are all these portals still open?” Hunk called out. “They’re all corrupted! We can’t use them!”

“The portals aren’t like a door that can just be opened or closed,” Allura said. “It rips open a hole through space, and that stays open for a certain portion of time. I have no control over how long they stay open.”

“Okay, stay focused,” Shiro announced. Beams of purple energy circled around them, a valley of corrupted portals mixing with the surrounding space. “These things are dangerous. We have to watch out for them.”

Even if they tried to form Voltron, the sheer quantity of ships surrounding them kept them torn apart. Keith had stayed near the main ship, doing everything he could to inflict any sort of damage. Hunk used his size and strength to his advantage, grabbing one ship and launching it into others around him. Pidge and Lance had teamed up in a game of cat and mouse, leading ships into each other and trying to draw attention away from the others. Shiro hung back, taking out anyone who came too close to the castle.

“We’re doing our best,” Keith said, “but this won’t do anything more than buy us time. We either need a strategy or an escape- oof!” Keith’s system cut out as his lion was hit by another ship, tangling him between a volley of attacks on his right and the large ship to his left.

Hunk was surrounded now, growing overwhelmed by the attention he drew to himself. Lance and Pidge were blown apart by a distant blast, allowing them to each be targeted personally. The Galra were trying to draw them inward, and it would only be a matter of time before the castle was attacked as well.

Allura sighed. “I’ll keep trying. Just stay on your toes, and stay safe.”

Just as she said that, Lance was hit again, only this time with one of the druids’ blasts of energy used to corrupt the portals. It sent his lion flying backwards, throwing him against his seat.

“Ow,” he muttered, grabbing the controls of the blue lion to bring her back under control.

Nothing happened.

A prickling feeling of anxiety started clawing its way up his spine, and he tried again, pulling at the controls with all his might, and yet still there was no response. 

“Hello?” he called into his comms. “I lost control!”

No response.

“Shit, shit, shit.” He pressed every button in sight, pushed and pulled the controls, and yet still no movement, no reaction, nothing but the pulling sensation of drifting uncontrollably across the void of space in the midst of a raging battle. Lance looked out to the scene in front of him, and saw the red lion approaching. Or rather, he was approaching the red lion, who was facing the opposite way.

“Keith! Keith, you have to move! I can’t control this-”

The crunch of metal on metal cut off his unheard cries as they were both launched forward. Before Keith could comprehend what was happening, or who had hit him, the two lions began to pick up speed.

A glowing screen appeared before Lance’s eyes, and he recognized one of the swirling purple portals they had been trying to avoid.

“No no no no no, Keith, buddy, you gotta get us out of here!”

There was nothing to be done, however, as the two of them were pulled into this mysterious portal and launched across space into an unknown void.

Before any of the other paladins could react or intervene, the portal had closed behind them, and Lance and Keith were gone.  
__________

Back on Earth, Lance had always lived for the feeling of falling. The lurch in his stomach, the wind in his hair, the feeling of freedom. Whether he was gliding over the curve of a roller coaster, or leaping from a cliff to the clear blue ocean below, the rush of adrenaline never changed.

But as he fell to an unknown planet below, no promise for a pull away at the last moment, or a vast expanse of water to catch him, the freedom that came with falling turned into nothing but pure, primal terror.

He opened his mouth to scream, to cry, but he hit the ground before any sound could come out.

Luckily, even without any control over his lion, it was still a giant metal robot. Between that and his armor, he was only tossed around across the cockpit. The blue lion had somewhat coiled up in the fall, so even damage there was minimal, though everything seemed to remain unresponsive. The gravity here didn’t seem too strong, leaving Lance feeling somewhat lighter than usual, so the impact didn’t seem too damaging.

After assessing himself for injuries and not finding anything too serious, Lance leapt from his place on the floor of the cockpit and dashed out of his lion. Surprisingly enough, when he reached the outside, the visor on his helmet didn’t shut down, meaning the air here was breathable.

Lance paused for a moment to collect himself with a long, yet shaky, breath of fresh air. It had been a long time since he had been able to do that.

After calming his nerves a bit, he was better able to take in the world around him. It was somewhat like Earth, in that they seemed to be in the middle of some sort of forest, only the colors were different. The trees surrounding him, if that’s what they could even be called, boasted wide, purple trunks that stretched far overhead. A ceiling of brilliant orange and golden leaves towered overhead, letting patches of sunshine reach the ground below.

There were no other animal species that he could detect in the nearby area, and certainly no intelligent life. Even if there were any beings to communicate with here, they definitely wouldn’t be found in the middle of nowhere like this. If there was anyone...well, two giant robots had fallen from the sky, and that was bound to capture someone’s attention. He would know sooner or later.

Wait...two lions! Lance snapped himself out of his thoughts and leapt down from the blue lion to see the red lion lying in a heap behind him. Unlike his, it seemed to have crashed fully exposed, and looked to be in worse shape. Even more nerve-wracking was the fact that Keith had not yet come out of his lion.

“Keith!” Lance called into his still-useless comms. “Come on, buddy, please be okay…”

He ran to the red lion in a mad dash, pausing before the red lion’s mouth. He sighed. “Please, I know you’re super protective of him, but if he’s hurt, I need to be able to get to him…..Hello? Are you awake? Please, I need to help him!”

Without a response, not even a flash of golden eyes, the only assumption to be made was that the red lion, too, was damaged from the fall. The consequences of that could be figured out later. For now, all that mattered was making sure Keith was alive.

Lance clambered up the red lion and towards the mouth. Luckily, in its fall, the jaws had fallen open, and now only a small metal door needed to be pried open. Adrenaline took over Lance’s senses, and with a firm grip, he slowly pulled the door open and rushed inside.

“Keith!” he called. “Are you okay?”

“...Ugh……..”

Once he was inside, he could now take in the state of disrepair that the red lion was left in. Debris lay scattered everywhere, and while it was still largely intact, it remained nowhere near the state of the blue lion. Keith too had been thrown from his seat in the fall, though the dent in the wall behind him and the helmet cast across the floor indicated that his tumble was not quite as graceful.

Lance skidded to his knees, sliding down to meet Keith. “Hey, you okay?”

Keith squinted one eye open, the other squinted closed behind a small rivulet of blood trailing its way down his face. “What do you think?”

Lance grimaced and rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “Right...well, are you at least intact? Anything broken? Let me see your eyes.”

Keith pulled himself up on an elbow, looking down the side of his body stretched before him, as if seeing each part of his body would tell him whether it was okay. He held himself upright for only a few seconds before his arm crumbled below him, and he fell back to the floor.

Lance grabbed his head before it landed. If Keith had a concussion, letting his head fall like that could do some serious damage. Lance gripped Keith’s chin and pulled it upwards to face him. Keith responded with a glare which went largely ignored as Lance used stretchy black material of his flight suit to wipe away the blood from his eye.

Same size.

Lance breathed out a sigh of relief. He seemed mostly coherent, if not a _tad_ angry, and nothing seemed too out of place. “Okay, that’s good, at least.”

Keith scoffed. “What is, Lance? What exactly is good? That we crashed who knows where? That our lions are wrecked? What were you thinking?!”

“Not my fault!” Lance defended. “I got hit with something that, like, paralyzed my lion. Couldn’t move, couldn’t communicate. Maybe if you had been paying attention, you could have gotten out of the way!”

“And then you would have fallen in and been stuck here alone?”

Lance went quiet and looked away. “Whatever. I’m fine. You’re fine. Let’s just be grateful for that.”

Keith sighed. “Fine. Were we followed?”

Lance shook his head, relieved that there seemed to be some blessings keeping them afloat in this sea of problems. “Not that I saw. Yeah, we might be alone out here, but at least we’re away from the Galra. Hopefully the others got away after that.”

Keith nodded and pulled himself up again, slower this time, pausing every few seconds to make sure he was steady. Lance eyed him from the side, not moving to offer help, but making sure it was available if needed.

“We need to contact them,” Keith said.

“Good luck,” Lance countered. “My lion is totally shut down, and yours doesn’t look any better. My helmet has been shut down since we got hit, and yours, well…”

Lance glanced across the floor to where the red helmet lay on the ground, dented, with only a small portion of the visor still intact.

Lance sighed. “I have a sneaking suspicion that yours isn’t going to be much use.”

Keith banged the side of his fist against the wall behind him. “Great. So we’re trapped in our lions now until someone finds us?”

Lance grinned, grateful for the reminder of the world waiting outside. “Nah, we can go out! My visor still seems to be working, and it didn’t close when I walked out. The atmosphere seems safe. You should see this place, it’s awesome!”

“We shouldn’t-”

Lance cut his arguments off by wrapping a hand around his forearm and gently tugging him towards the exit. “Come on! Let’s go explore!”

Keith sighed, but rose to follow. As he stepped out, he had to bring his hands up to shield the sunlight that glowed against the red and silver metal of the red lion. Once his eyes adjusted, though, he noticed the vast expanse of enormous trees looming overhead, with a mix of purple and blue plants covering the forest floor below. Occasional spots of gold popped up through the mixture, leaves and seeds that had fallen to the ground from above. Beyond the brilliant ceiling of leaves above, a clear, soft pink sky shone brightly. 

The whole planet smelled vaguely of Earth after a rainy day, with a sort of moisture that stuck to your skin and left everything feeling a bit heavier. The only sounds to be heard were occasional chirps from the world around, likely some small animal or bug, and the soft rustle of a breeze between the leaves.

Keith stood back, braced against the warm metal of his lion, awestruck by the overwhelming sense of _liveliness_ that surrounded them.

Lance glanced back, a knowing smile stretched across his face. “Come on, you gotta admit that this place is cool.”

Keith shook his head and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “We need to find a way to contact the ship.”

“Hey, Captain Buzzkill, in case you forgot, I already told you that we don’t have anything here to contact them with.”

“Alright, then let’s find someone who can,” Keith said. “There’s gotta be some sort of intelligent species here we can talk to.”

“In the middle of a forest?” Lance argued, quirking an eyebrow up.

Keith sighed. “Okay, so we have to get out of here first.”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

“Well, let’s get in our lions and go- oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. Face it, mullet, we’re stranded.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay stay with me here, this chapter is a lot of setup, the real fun starts in the next few chapters! Which will hopefully be up soon. If everything goes according to plan, this should update once (or maybe twice) a week? I have a few more chapters done but I wanna keep this consistent, so this should hypothetically be done right around the start of season 3. AHHHHH
> 
> Anyways, [come check out my tumblr](https://zurela.tumblr.com/) for updates or other stuff or general tomfoolery!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at me, keeping a consistent update schedule! That's definitely new. Let's see how long that lasts?

Keith spent the next few hours working diligently on fixing his lion and his helmet. While it wasn’t much, the lions each came equipped with some tools and provisions, should they be needed. Even if Lance said the air was breathable, it could just be that his visor was broken. And even then, there was a lack of food, water, and other intelligent life or any advanced society. They needed to get out of there as soon as possible.

“Can anybody hear me?” he called into his helmet for about the fiftieth time that hour, pausing occasionally from tinkering and pulling pieces apart, looking for any sort of signal. “Shiro, Allura? This is Keith, paladin of the red lion of Voltron. We are stuck on an uninhabited planet. Hello?”

He growled in frustration, throwing his helmet to the side from his spot on the ground, where it collided with a nearby tree trunk. “This isn’t working! Lance, give me your helmet.”

Lance, who had spent his time poking around in the plants instead of helping, twisted to glare at Keith. “Why, so you can try and broadcast our location to every hostile alien out there? Why not add in, ‘hey, these lions are broken and we’re totally powerless, please come save us and definitely don’t steal the most powerful weapons in the universe!’ Pass.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Okay then, how do you plan on getting us out of here?”

Lance smiled, plucking a bright blue flower from the ground and sticking it behind his ear. “I don’t.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Come on, be serious for once.”

Lance trotted over and sat beside Keith in the soft dirt, pulling his knees up and leaning back to relax against the red lion. “I’m being serious! Your lion and helmet are both busted. Mine are glitched out, and neither of us has the technical expertise to fix any of those issues. If Pidge or Hunk were here, sure, maybe we would have a chance, but you and I are pilots and fighters. Well, Keith, we don’t have anything to fly, and unless you want to go fight that tree, I would cross fighting off the list, too. Our best option is to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Something! Anything! Maybe there’s intelligent life here, on the other side of the planet. For all we know, this could be just like Earth, and we just happened to land in the alien Appalachians. But two giant robotic lions just fell from the sky, and if there’s anyone on this planet that could potentially help us, they’ll get here eventually.”

“And if there’s not intelligent life?” Keith countered.

Lance grinned. “Then we wait for the others! Between Coran, Pidge, and Hunk, they’ll figure out where we ended up in no time. Have a little faith in them, and enjoy the time we have here! It’s like a vacation. I bet we could even find a beach if we looked hard enough.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “We warped away in the middle of battle, and they still hadn’t been able to make a portal. Plus, now they’re two fighters out, and definitely can’t form Voltron. Who says they’re even around to come save us?”

Lance stiffened beside him, jolting up to look Keith in the eyes. “They’re safe. I know it,” he said.

Keith sighed. “Lance, we have to be realistic. We don’t know-”

Lance slapped a hand down into the dirt below, gripping a handful of dark red silt in a tight fist. “Don’t talk like that. They’re safe, and they’re going to find us, and everything will be fine.”

“You can’t just expect everyone to come save you when you don’t know what to do.”

Lance said nothing, his eyes narrowing into thin slits in a cold glare. “Not everything is about me, Keith.”

Before Keith could respond, Lance released his grip and threw the handful of soil back to the ground, narrowly missing Keith. Then he rose to his feet and stomped away without another word, headed into the lush forest around them.

Well, whatever. He left his helmet, so at least Keith could mess around with it while he was gone.  
__________

A few hours passed and not much had changed. Keith’s fingers began to tremble after tinkering inside Lance’s helmet nonstop, and a trail of sweat began to drip down his forehead. While the planet around them wasn’t necessarily hot enough to be deemed a jungle, it was certainly humid, the sticky discomfort in the air making itself more and more pronounced with time.

Maybe Lance was right about devoting time into exploring the planet rather than just planning an escape. The sky had begun to darken slightly, so night couldn’t be too far away, and an itch had developed in Keith’s throat, reminding him that he hadn’t had any water since before the fight with the Galra.

Hopefully Lance would find something nearby while exploring. Then he could come back and they could make a plan and Keith wouldn’t have to apologize, or admit that he was wrong, and everything would be fine. Keith had never prided himself on being an emotionally open person, so it was in everyone’s best interest to just move on and do what they could to focus on a plan.  
Then again, Lance was about as emotionally open as it got. His feelings were always available, known and on full display across his face. 

Keith sighed. He hoped, for both of their sakes, that they got out of there soon.

Keith had only just gotten back to working on their helmets before Lance reappeared, looking relaxed and nonchalant as usual. His annoyed attitude from earlier seemed completely gone, and had Keith not seen him storm off before, he would have never known something had ever been wrong.

“Did you have a nice walk?” Keith asked, testing the waters to see if Lance really was fine.

“In fact I did,” Lance said as he walked past Keith towards his lion. As he turned away, Keith noticed something large and yellow on the shoulder of Lance’s armor, looking like some strange cross between a beetle and a turtle.

“Lance,” Keith called out hesitantly, “don’t freak out. But there’s a big bug or something on your shoulder.”

Lance turned towards Keith and quirked an eyebrow. “Huh? Oh!”

He reached a hand up and plucked the large creature off and let it rest in his hands, seeming completely calm and almost...eager?

“Isn’t this cool? I found him while I was walking. His name is Hunk Jr.”

Keith gaped at him. “You were out...playing with bugs? Is that _it_?”

Lance rolled his eyes. “What do you mean, _is that it_? Hunk Jr. is very important.”

Keith huffed out a breath in frustration. “Lance, we’re trying to get off of this planet. I’ve been working my butt off sitting here trying to fix _your_ helmet, and you were just off playing with bugs in the woods? We need to focus!”

Lance placed the bug on a large plant next to him and turned back, mouth open and ready for what would probably be an attempt to tease Keith. Keith cut him off before he could even start.

“We need to prepare for the worst right now. We’re stranded, not on vacation. We don’t know who, or what, is here. The sooner we fix the lions or the communication channels, the sooner we can get out of here.”

Lance put his hands on his hips. “So did you fix it, then?”

Keith blinked. “Huh?”

Lance shrugged. “You’re talking pretty big, considering it looks like you haven’t made any progress.”

Keith felt his shoulders hunch on reflex, poised to start arguing. Instead he took a long, calming breath and leaned back. “Look. I’m doing my best, okay? At least I’m trying!”

“So you didn’t fix it,” Lance deadpanned.

“No,” Keith begrudgingly agreed. “I didn’t fix it.”

“Well,” Lance said, a sly smile crossing his face, the old spark returned to his eyes. “It just so happens that _I_ found a stream nearby, so I came back here to see if there’s anything in the lions that can clean the water.”

Keith gaped again, surprised at this revelation, but didn’t comment on it. Lance didn’t need an even bigger ego boost at this point. “I think there might something, but not much.”

Lance’s shoulders slumped. “Guess I’d better figure out how to make a fire then. And figure out a shelter, while I’m at it.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Stop pretending like we’re going to be here forever. We don’t need all that.”

“Hmm,” Lance hummed, crossing his arms and looking off into the woods.

“What?”

“Well,” Lance said, posture stiff, “considering how dark it’s gotten, I’d say the chances of us being rescued today are slim. And since you’ve been here the whole time, I’m guessing you haven’t had any water since we got here?”

Keith gulped, the lump in his throat feeling more pronounced than ever.

Lance nodded. “Right. Well, considering the state our lions are in right now, I’ll take my chances out here. Since they’re both busted, I doubt either of them could make a barrier anyways. If we sleep there, we would just be sitting ducks.”

Keith stiffened, still hunched up on the ground, helmets abandoned to his side. “I’m not abandoning Red.”

Lance shrugged. “We have to be realistic,” he teased, throwing Keith’s earlier words back in his face.

Keith stood up and made his way over to Lance. Even if he hadn’t been goofing off, he still wasn’t taking this situation seriously. “We can’t just abandon the lions. If there is intelligent life here, we have to make sure they stay safe. Don’t you even care about the blue lion?”

Lance took a step back. “Of course I do,” he argued, seeming offended at the notion. “But if her pilot dies on some random planet because she couldn’t protect me, that doesn’t exactly help either of us.”

“Fine,” Keith said. “If that’s what you want to do, go for it. I’ll be here, watching out for _both_ of our lions and looking for a way out of here. Enjoy your vacation.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “I will.”

Lance turned and started marching back into the woods, scooping Hunk Jr. back into his hands as he left. Keith huffed and grabbed their helmets, dragging them into the red lion with him.  
__________

The dry ache in Keith’s throat only became more irritating with time, and his head ached against the cold metal floor of the red lion’s cockpit.

Strange creaking noises and pops startled Keith awake every few minutes. After nearly falling asleep for the fifth time, a large chunk of something metallic fell to the floor mere inches from Keith’s head.

He sighed, stood up, and promptly exited his lion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I really love writing this, and I think that love increases with each chapter. I'm working on 4 and 5 right now and...hooo boy. Get ready for this to be the last chapter where things aren't going too bad for my boys.
> 
> In the meantime, it would be super cool if you [followed me on tumblr](https://zurela.tumblr.com/)! Otherwise, see you next Friday (hopefully)!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All there is to do, now, is wait. And survive. Keith is doing his best at both.

Keith swore under his breath as another branch poked him in the side while he trekked through the woods, slashing every which way with his sword. His back ached with each twist, sore from sleeping on the cold ground the night before. The goal today was to collect wood to build some sort of shelter, along with a fire if he was could manage it.

He had found a decent enough spot to build a shelter at, with open ground softened by short indigo grass. It hosted a few trees, thinner than most but still wide compared to trees on Earth. Beams of light managed to penetrate through the thinner foliage, but there were still enough trees to provide a base to build a shelter on. Plus, it was still fairly close to the lions, so he could keep an eye on them without being immediately discovered if they were found.

Keith smirked to himself as he swiped through a branch dangling in front of his path. He may not have a perfect solution yet, but this was bound to be better than whatever shelter Lance had scrounged up. 

After collecting a decent amount of branches and logs, and working up a decent sweat at trying to cut away at trees with a sword, Keith finally made his way back to his spot. The cool morning had given way to a warm day, with small slivers of bright sunshine poking through the treetops and leaving the world above glowing a fiery orange. Colorful birds swooped overhead and strange bugs chirped from unseen spots on the ground.

Keith would be lying if he said he didn’t find this place beautiful.

Sure, they weren’t supposed to be here, and there was still a possibility of there being some sort of hostile species here, but for now this planet had been nothing but peaceful. It reminded him, strangely, of the desert back on Earth. Despite the fact that they couldn’t be more different, with the desert’s dry emptiness compared to the lush vivacity of the forest, they both resonated with some sort of feeling of isolation. Keith had always felt best when he was alone, just another small piece in a giant, dynamic world.

Not that he would ever admit any of that to Lance. Even if he did like this place, that still didn’t make this a vacation.

Along the way to build his shelter, Keith passed the clearing where the lions waited. They still didn’t seem to be functioning, but at least they were safe. If someone did decide to make an appearance, and the lions couldn’t move or protect themselves, they would be completely screwed.

A small clang of metal on metal snapped Keith to attention.

Keith looked around for any sign of someone being here. None of Lance’s stuff was here, and Keith hadn’t seen him since last night. A feeling of panic crept up his throat.

Was he wrong? Was someone here, trying to take them without being noticed? Keith gently placed his armful of wood onto the ground, careful to stay quiet. Maybe he could catch whoever this was before they ran off, or worse, started a fight.

Keith crept forward slowly, staying low to the ground, heart racing wildly. Another sound rang out, and Keith determined they were by the blue lion. A louder sound now, gnashing and squealing. If the intruder was going for stealth, they were failing.

Finally, after hiding behind the red lion and peeking out to find nothing, Keith burst forward, bayard extending in his hand. He rounded the corner to reach the other side of the blue lion, and pointed his sword directly at the throat of-

Lance.

“Whoa, buddy,” Lance called out, arms raised in alarm. “You eat some weird space mushroom? It’s just me.”

Keith sighed and dropped his arms to his side, letting his sword shrink back into its bayard form. “I thought you were an alien trying to steal the lions.”

Lance snorted. “Good luck,” he said. “They’re still pretty busted. Unless they have their own magic castle to beam it up, I don’t think anyone will get far.”

“That’s still a possibility,” Keith argued. “We have to be prepared for anything.”

Lance reached up to the blue lion’s left paw, Keith’s gaze following to see a small pile of supplies there. Before he could make out what they were, Lance scooped them up into his arms. “Well, in that case, I think I would notice if they came. You’re being paranoid.”

“I’m being cautious,” Keith argued.

“I gotta head back to my shelter,” Lance continued. “How was your night sleeping on the ground?”

Keith sputtered before crossing his arms, trying his best not to seem thrown off. “I didn’t! I stayed in my lion all night, like I said.”

“Right,” Lance said with a knowing smile. “So the leaves in your mullet aren’t from sleeping on the ground? See you later.”

Lance turned and retreated back into the woods while Keith reached up and plucked out the small blue leaves that had gotten tangled in his hair.

Dang it.  
__________

Lance and Keith only saw each other in passing for the next few days, neither of them telling the other where their shelter was located or how they had been getting by. With each passing exchange, they glanced each other over, making sure everything was alright, before continuing on with their usual teasing. As much as Lance was driving Keith crazy, they both had to stay alive.

Not that it had really been a problem yet. The lions were decently stocked, containing food rations, water purification kits, and basic medical supplies. The planet they were on remained pleasantly habitable, with weather similar to that on Earth in the springtime, and no major predators or enemies to speak of. Anything with technology that was advanced enough to repair the lions or contact the others had failed to arrive, so an intelligent species seemed unlikely at this point. And while there was no mistaking the sounds of animals running through the woods at night, nothing had confronted them directly.

With each passing day of no threats, no lions, and no way out of there, the atmosphere seemed to grow more relaxed. It was clear that at this point it was just a waiting game, so the only thing to _do_ was survive.  
__________

On the third day there, Keith trekked through the woods on his usual path to the stream that he and Lance had been using for water, a metal box from his lion in hand. Their water purification supplies would only last them for about a week, so he had been rationing carefully, but it was nice to have extra water nearby.

The day was hot and humid, weird bugs flying everywhere and circling his head. One particularly colorful bug, something between a butterfly and a dragonfly, went buzzing past his face and off into the woods to his right.

The trees seemed to thicken in that direction, leaving the area darker than the surrounding forest. Mesmerized by the bright insect, Keith diverted from his trail to follow it.

Pushing through the trees that seemed to grow wider and darker with every step, he stumbled out in front of a small cavern, completely invisible from even mere feet away. The butterfly rested on a rock just in front of the opening, brilliant orange wings dotted with bright blue spots spread wide open. Keith extended a hand and gently lifted the rock, but the strange insect only stayed for a moment before fluttering back into the woods. His shoulders slumped, ready to head back to the pond before the rock in his hand caught his eye.

It was almost...glowing?

Keith crouched down, poking his head into the mouth of the cavern and finding piles of brilliant red stones that seemed to shine even in the absence of sunlight. Keith examined the stone in his hand, turning it around in his palm before shrugging and throwing it back into the pile.

As soon as it hit the other rocks, a brilliant spark lit up the walls. Keith startled back before reaching in and picking up two of the red stones, gripping them in his fingertips for a moment before striking them together.

More sparks flew out, even bigger than before.

Keith froze for a moment, hands outstretched in front of him, staring at the strange rocks resting in his palms.

He threw a triumphant fist in the air, letting out a quiet cheer of victory. He grabbed a handful of stones and made a mental note to go gather firewood later.

Keith made his way back to the stream to get water, only to find Lance wading in the middle, with only his eyes visible above the surface of the water. When he saw Keith, though, he leapt up, drops of water trailing down his bare arms.

“Hey mullet!” Lance called, waving a hand over his head. “Did you come to join the fun? The water feels great!”

Keith rolled his eyes, his gaze falling on the black flight suit that sat discarded along the shore. “I think I’ll pass. And go find a new water source.”

“Buzzkill!” Lance called to Keith’s retreating back.  
__________

On the fifth day, Keith passed by Lance’s camp, realizing for the first time that Lance had found a small cave built into the side of a cliff to hide out in. Lance sat just inside, a shoddy pile of sticks at his feet, rubbing two together in a poor attempt at making a fire.

Keith smirked and poked his head inside. “Having any luck?”

Lance rolled his eyes and scowled. “Shut up.”

“It was pretty cold last night,” Keith continued. “I had a great campfire going over at my place. Such a shame that you missed out.”

Lance only groaned in frustration, throwing the stick in his right hand towards Keith’s head, only for it to go flying wildly to the side.

“Enjoy your cave!” Keith called as he began strolling away. “It looks...cozy.”

He ducked just in time for another stick to go flying just past his ear.  
__________

On the sixth day, Keith crawled out of his hut feeling like a drowned rat. It had finally clouded over the night before, releasing a torrential downpour sometime in the night. The rainwater mixed with the rich soil beneath him, creating a sloppy mud and leaving him soaked, exhausted, and freezing.

By early morning, it finally slowed to a light drizzle, and Keith right away attempted to make a fire to dry himself out. But the water had completely drenched all of his wood and left a feeling of moisture clinging to everything. Keith sighed and resigned himself to hide out in his lion until the rain passed.

Once again, he encountered Lance at the lions, only Keith quickly realized that this time he was digging around in the red lion. He fumed, sprinting for his lion to find Lance digging through the cockpit.

“What are you doing?” Keith shouted, pent up frustration from the night before rearing itself to life in Keith’s chest.

Lance jumped up, hitting his head on a piece of metal where he had been digging around, completely oblivious to Keith’s entrance. He whipped around with wide eyes, looking like a deer caught in headlights. 

“Nothing!”

Keith crossed his arms. “Are you… _looting_ my lion?”

“No! I was just….it’s none of your business!” Lance scrambled backwards, pushing his back against the back wall of the cockpit.

“It’s my lion, Lance.”

Lance shook his head. “Why are you even here?”

Keith looked to the side, saying nothing. Lance looked him over, taking in his dripping hair and mud-soaked flight suit. A grin spread across his face. “You got caught in the rain last night, huh?”

Keith tried not to pout. “No.”

Lance scooted forward on his hands and knees and stood to meet Keith. “What, did your little hut of twigs and leaves not protect you? Such a shame. But hey, at least you could build a fire! Oh wait, no, because you don’t have anything dry, do you?” Lance teased.

Keith bristled. “Get out!” he shouted, extending an arm to reach for Lance.

Lance dodged and rushed for the exit. “Whatever. You don’t have what I need anyways. Have fun drying off!”

And with that, he was gone.  
__________

On day ten, Keith spent the morning playing with the controls of the lions, and was disappointed to find that they still seemed completely lifeless. He sighed, pulling out his bayard and heading towards the woods.

They had been here for a long time now, longer than he anticipated. There was no telling what the others thought could have happened, or if they were even okay. And Keith was stuck here, completely powerless and unable to do anything but sit and wait.

Waiting sucked.

His stomach growled with hunger. The rations from his lion were dwindling, and until he could catch something to eat, he had to do some serious rationing. There was no way he would chance eating any of the mysterious plants around them, though there seemed to be bright fruits blooming all over. It was hard to resist sometimes, but there was no telling if the plump berries sprouting around him were as harmless as blueberries or as deadly as nightshade.

He had improvised a few traps, using vines and sticks to catch small animals or leaves piled on top of a hole to trap something, but to no avail so far. He had reverted to trying hunting by hand, or use his sword like a throwing spear. 

That wasn’t exactly going well.

Keith grumbled as he tried to climb a tree for the fourth time, only to fall again. He had lived alone before. He knew how to take care of himself. He could cook, he could repair things, he could treat basic injuries. But the desert was mostly barren, and he had never hunted as a kid. Heck, even his bayard formed as a sword because his aim was horrible.

As he fell from the same tree, again, a skittering sound overhead caught his attention. There, towards the top of the very tree he had been trying to climb, sat some sort of large animal. Keith couldn’t make out much of it, but he could see two big beady eyes staring down at him.

Keith grinned and pulled himself up, tightening his grip on his sword before taking a swing at the trunk of the tree. If he couldn’t get up there, why not bring this little guy down here?

The tree shook violently with each strike from the sword, with its sharp blade that never seemed to dull. When his arms grew tired, Keith resorted to sawing away at the sturdy wood. The animal sat in place, just watching. 

Finally, the tree began to tilt, and the animal seemed to realize its hiding spot wouldn’t last much longer. While Keith paused to wipe sweat away from his face, the thing scurried down the remaining trunk of the tree and leapt to the ground. It paused, staring at Keith as if to wait for him to realize what happened.

Keith grabbed his sword and jumped after it, face planting in the dirt while the creature tore off. He followed, sprinting clumsily in its direction. This thing was fast, but then again, so was Keith.

The plants around them grew darker in color, the trees thinning out, and Keith grinned as he realized how close he was to his camp. He circled around the animal, driving it to the side a bit, exhausted and out of breath but refusing to slow down for even a second, and-

_Thump_. The animal ran straight over a large pile of leaves on the ground, falling into one of Keith’s traps. Before it could try and climb out, Keith leapt over the top and used his torso to trap it inside, grateful that he was wearing his armor. He lifted himself up onto his knees and peered down, finally getting a closer look at his dinner.

It looked like a giant rodent, with a body like a wolverine and a face like a guinea pig. Patches of black and white fur created a strange pattern down its back. 

Keith smirked. “Well, you’re sort of cute, but unfortunately for you, I’m starving.”  
__________

While he had been sawing away at the tree earlier, Keith failed to realize that it had turned to evening. The pink sky turned to a deep magenta, with stars beginning to dot the sky. A warm breeze rustled through the grass, leaving the tall campfire in front of Keith’s hut dancing wildly. The bugs seemed to grow more active at night, two more of those strange orange butterflies sitting idly on a nearby bush, backed by a chorus of chirping insects that grew louder than ever.

This really was beginning to feel like camping. It was almost fun, once you got past the fact that they were stranded and that the planet was full of aliens.

Keith held a piece of meat from his earlier catch out in front of him on a stick, roasting it slowly over the fire. It smelled delicious, and would probably fill him up much better than any of those rations did. 

Lance would be so jealous.

An anxious feeling began gnawing at his stomach. If Keith was running low on food, did that mean that Lance was, too? Sure, he could probably hunt even better than Keith could since he had his gun, but…

Keith also hadn’t seen him in a few days.

In fact, the last time Keith had seen him was when they ran into each other in the red lion. It was safe to assume to Lance was just avoiding him so Keith couldn’t yell at him for being in his lion, but now it had been four days.

Keith sighed and pulled his knees to his chest. He was probably worrying for nothing.

The meat in his hand was browning, the scent growing even stronger. Once Keith was sure that it was thoroughly cooked, he pulled it away from the flames and let it cool for a minute before taking a bite.

Dear lord, it tasted even better than it smelled. A vast improvement over the bland food goo in the castle. He could get used to this.

Keith glanced back to the animal lying at his side. He wouldn’t need all of the meat for one meal, and it probably wouldn’t last long. It would be a shame to get rid of most of it.

The worrying feeling in his stomach flared back to life. Well, he might as well go see if Lance needed food. If not, he could just show off his hunting and cooking skills and make him jealous.

That was all this was. Lance clearly didn’t need, or want, his help. He just wanted to brag. Lance could take care of himself, and so could Keith. He glanced up to look off into the woods. There were no sounds to be heard but the distant chirps of a few lone insects. One of the two butterflies on the bush fluttered off into the dark.

Keith sighed and pushed himself up from his spot in front of the campfire, bringing his stick with the rest of his food and scooping up the remains of his wolverine rat. He took one more chomp from the meat before tossing the clean stick to the ground. 

The woods were dark, only small streams of moonlight and the last remaining purple glow of daytime lighting the way. Had he been thinking clearly, Keith probably would have made a torch. The path to Lance’s cave wasn’t difficult to walk, but Keith still found himself stumbling on roots and stones.

Finally, just as he began to believe that he had gotten himself completely lost, the trees stopped as they met a wall of rock. Keith followed the edge of the wall, searching blindly for the opening that led to Lance’s makeshift home. His fingers found a dip in the wall, and Keith stepped back to find a wide, pitch black opening in the cliffside.

So Lance still hadn’t been able to make a fire, then? Or had he already gone to sleep for the night?

“Lance?” Keith called out, his voice echoing off the cave walls. “I brought food, in case you’re sick of food rations. Caught it myself.”

Nothing. As Keith walked further into the cave, the remaining light from outside faded into total darkness. Was Lance even here?

Keith sighed and headed back towards the woods. He had tried, and that was good enough.

Just before he could leave, a low groaning sound caught his attention. Keith doubled back, peering around inside, to find Lance slumped over on the ground.

“Lance!” Keith called frantically, dropping to his knees beside him. Lance remained propped up against the wall of the cave, head tilted back and eyes closed. Keith gripped his shoulders, shaking him gently. Lance only moaned again, his head falling limply to the side.

“Lance? What happened?” Keith tried to prop Lance’s head back up, feeling an alarming heat radiating from his skin. He moved to his side, leading Lance’s head to gently rest against the wall, before placing a hand on his forehead and finding a raging fever burning beneath his skin.

Lance grimaced, trying to pull himself up before falling to the side. Keith caught him, pulling him into his arms and letting Lance’s head rest against his shoulder, the heat of his skin burning into Keith’s neck.

“Water…” Lance whispered.

“You need water?” Keith asked. “I can go-”

“Ran out of...clean stuff. Drank the water.”

Keith felt his stomach drop. His purification tablets had run out a few days ago. If Lance hadn’t been able to make a fire, then there was no other way to get clean water.

“Lance?” Keith asked. “How much water did you drink? When did you run out? How long have you felt like this?”

Lance didn’t answer, seeming to finally fall unconscious, going completely boneless in Keith’s embrace. Panic pulsed through Keith’s veins, a feeling of electricity dancing across his skin. He could have been like this for days, and Keith didn’t even know. Now they were stuck here, with no help, no medical supplies, no way out.

Keith guided Lance down to the ground, onto a pile of grass he seemed to be using as a makeshift bed. Keith sat beside him and pulled himself up into a ball, burying his face in his knees.

They were really stuck here. Before, it had been fine, because they were getting by. Keith didn’t need to worry about them, and could focus on getting home, worrying about the team. So long as everything was okay here, and the real danger was somewhere far away, he could remain calm.

Now, though...the lions were powerless. There was no telling when the team would find them, or if they were even able to. Lance was sick, with something Keith had no idea how to treat, or any means of treating it. 

They were completely and utterly alone.

Keith had reveled in that feeling before, but now...it felt like a death sentence. This wasn’t a nice camping trip, this was a survival situation. The gravity of their predicament hit Keith like a ton of bricks, knocking the breath out of his lungs.

Lance needed him, and he failed. They could play pretend out here all they wanted, but at the end of the day, there was nothing to be done. Keith had no idea what to do, and he was doomed to do it alone.

He was powerless.

Lance curled into a ball and moaned, shaking Keith from his spiral into madness. Lance loosely wrapped his arms around himself, shaking like a leaf. Pain and discomfort were written across his face.

Keith took a deep breath and fell onto his back. This couldn’t be it. They were paladins of Voltron, two of the fiercest fighters in the universe. Their team was out there, surely doing whatever they could to find them, and it was up to Keith to make sure they did their part, too.

And if that wasn’t the case? Well, that wasn’t a situation to think about. He would not accept the worst case scenario when there was still hope. So long as there was even a chance of things being okay, he would fight for it. Keith had faith in his team, had faith in their ability to survive. And he knew they had faith in him.

So he had to be someone who deserved that faith.

Keith pulled himself up, marching back in the general direction of his campsite. The glow of a fire began to grow in the distance, and he sprinted the remaining distance. He grabbed a branch lying on the ground nearby, then ripped a strip of gauze from the roll in his med kit. He wrapped it around the top of the branch, tying it into a tight knot and dipping it into the flames. 

It wasn’t great, but it would work.

His canteen of clean water lay next to the fire with the rest of his supplies. The metal box that he had taken from his lion sat beside it, full of unboiled water. Keith plunged the end of his torch into the ground and picked up the box, dumping the water over the flames of the campfire. Then he scooped up his remaining supplies, grabbed his torch, and headed back.

He might not have medicine, or anyone to help him, but he could do this. He _would_ do this, for the team, for Lance. Their rivalry had been dumb, and because of it, Lance was in serious danger. The least he could do was get him some clean water and a fire.

They were _going_ to get off this planet. Both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY things are getting dramatic. This was a bit too okay for a bit too long, and that's not how I roll.
> 
> Until then, see you next Friday! Or sooner if you come [follow me on tumblr](https://zurela.tumblr.com/), of course :)


	4. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's Lance been up to this whole time?

It was strange how this planet could be so much like Earth and yet...so alien. The trees were purple, the sky was pink. The world around them felt like a jungle but looked like a forest; like everything was free and open, yet there was a sense of crowdedness that made the whole place feel inescapable. 

And maybe it was. For all Lance knew, the whole planet could be like this.

An entire world, filled with color and life, yet also such an overwhelming sense of stillness. He could get used to it. At the end of the day, it was obviously important that they find the team and fix their lions, but why not enjoy a mini vacation in the meantime? Even if the only one around to enjoy it with was Keith.

Lance stretched, extending his arms above his head and reaching up to the golden leaves overhead. He inhaled deeply, letting the smell of rain and soil and clean air consume him. It wasn’t quite the same as Earth, nothing ever could be. But the rich feeling of lungs expanding, of a wave of sublimity that dominates everything, of a warm tingle that pools in the bottom of your feet, climbing up your spine and tingling the tips of your fingers. That feeling which had been previously reserved for Earth -- stamped down and forgotten after seeing one desolate, war-torn planet after another -- suddenly bloomed forward. It was like home, the first real peaceful experience since leaving Earth so many months ago.

“Can anybody hear me?” Keith continued to shout into his clearly-broken helmet.

Well, maybe not totally peaceful.  
__________

It was only a matter of time before Keith drove Lance away. Not only did he ruin the nice atmosphere of the planet, but then he tried to tell Lance that the others could be doing anything but searching for them from the safety of the castle.

Right. Did he really expect Lance to believe that? They were fine. They were strong, and had overcome everything so far. Even two paladins down, they could handle themselves.

They had to handle themselves.

Lance stomped through the woods, no goal or destination in mind. It didn’t matter where he ended up so long as he was far away from Keith. Why even talk like that? With no lions or any aliens to help them get away, dwelling on the possible fate of the others didn’t do any good.

A vine entangled itself around Lance’s foot, sending him sprawling to the ground, face shoved in the dirt. He sighed, spitting out a mouthful of soil in the process. 

Maybe Keith was right. This planet was foreign, and potentially dangerous. There was no telling where the others were, or if they were alive. Down here, with no lions and nowhere to turn to, anything could happen.

Lance turned his head to the side and let it fall to the ground. It was time to buckle down and be mature about this.

Just as he moved to get up, a slight movement from the ground caught his eye. Lance got to his knees and peeked over the plants in front of him to see a big yellow bug munching away at a blue leaf. It looked like a beetle, if a beetle shell was larger and rougher than usual, and if beetles were _way_ bigger.

Unable to fight his curiosity, Lance reached over and gently picked up the bug. It started squirming, stretching its long yellow legs towards Lance’s hand in the search for something to cling to.

“Ah!” he yelped, dropping it back to ground. The bug landed on its back, its flat and heavy shell keeping it from flipping over. It continued waving its legs in an attempt to grab something, but couldn’t move beyond a gentle wiggle.

Lance giggled, watching the bug squirm, before the laughter consumed his lungs and left him rolled on his side, gasping for breath. Leave it to Keith to turn Lance into a sad, paranoid mess. This planet was great, the two of them were safe, and the team would find them sooner or later.

Lance reached an arm out once again, gently lifting the bug and turning it back over. It paused for a moment before turning back to its snack, completely unbothered by the whole situation.

Lance laughed again. “You have your priorities straight, little man. Just like someone else I know. I bet he would love your whole color scheme, too. In fact,” he said, reaching down again to pick the bug up and place it on his shoulder, “you’re my new friend. I’m gonna call you Hunk Jr. Come on, let’s go explore.”

The beetle-creature seemed fine with that, staying put in his new resting spot. Lance stood back up and brushed the dirt from his armor before continuing his journey through the woods. There were still plants everywhere, but the trees seemed to thin out more and more, leaving almost a lush prarie to walk across. The grass seemed to grow taller here, and the soil underfoot turned rockier.

A few minutes later, a low whirring sound started, growing louder as Lance continued forward. Soon enough, with hardly any trees around and tall, thick grasses everywhere, he stumbled upon a stream. It wasn’t quite wide enough to be considered a river, but it was fairly large. The water seemed to be deep, like a dark scar cutting across the land. The deep red of the soil made the water seem almost black, and it flowed quickly but gently.

Lance hesitantly stuck a hand out, dipping the tip of his pointer finger into the water. It was refreshingly cool but not cold, reminding him of the beach on a warm sunny day back on Earth. Just peeking into the dark water, Lance could see the faint shadows of fish following the flow of the stream. He smiled and stuck both hands into the water, scooping up a handful and splashing his face.

It wasn’t until he felt the cool relief of water washing over his face that he realized he had been hot and exhausted. Not long ago, he had been in the middle of a heated battle, only to crash and wind up exploring a strange new planet. He could barely fight the temptation not to dunk his head in completely and just breathe the water in.

Mesmerized by the swirling current in front of him, Lance almost failed to notice the bright shock of color coming from the middle of the stream. The water curved around a sleek black rock, a bright orange butterfly gentle fluttering its wings on top. There didn’t seem to be any other insects nearby. It sat there for a moment longer, crawling around on the rock and down towards the surface of the water. It seemed to only gently touch the water for a moment before it took off, flying in flashing circles up to the sky and disappearing into the ceiling of equally bright leaves.

Lance shook his head, snapping himself back to the present. Alien planet, alien bugs, with alien water. It wasn’t even safe to drink dirty water on Earth, let alone wherever he was. As thirsty as he was, he had to be cautious.

Lance rose to sore legs, stretching himself tall before checking to make sure his skin wasn’t dissolving off from acid water, and that his little bug friend was still there. Hunk Jr. sat still in his same position on Lance’s shoulder, seeming completely unbothered by the movement or splash of water.

Alright, time to find something to clean this. Whether they were here a day or a month, water was very much needed.  
__________

Going back to where Keith was had been just about as unproductive as the first time. Not only ad Keith made no progress in contacting the castle, but then had the nerve to criticize Lance, who had at least _done_ something. So what if he thought of this like a vacation? He was happy and relaxed, while Keith was strung out, and yet they had both made the same amount of progress towards finding the others.

He was mad that he had forgotten to grab supplies, though. That had been the point in going back there in the first place, but Keith drove him off before he had the chance to grab anything.

Well, he couldn’t go back now. He’d rather explore and go thirsty for a bit then get into _another_ argument with Keith.

Lance made his way back to the stream, wandering aimlessly for a bit before locating the familiar vegetation growing near the stream. The familiar sound of water splashing over rocks carried him back over.

He sighed, dropping to his knees next to the stream before sitting back. Lance inhaled deeply, letting the fresh air expand his lungs before slowly letting it back out. The world around him had grown a bit louder as the day started turning to night, with all sorts of mysterious chirps and hums emanating from the trees around him.

The water remained calm as ever, slipping over stones and carrying on through the woods before curving away out of sight. Everything around Lance exuded a sense of calm.

Still, the feeling was empty. The normal warmth that sat at the back of his head for so long now, the now familiar weight of something else being there with him was just...gone. Did Keith still feel his lion’s presence? Or was he as closed off as Lance was?

Sure, he had said that it seemed best to stay away from the lions for now, and he meant it. But the hum of reassurance that usually came with his decisions, or the occasional buzz of disagreement, was now missing.

This was the mighty Blue Lion of Voltron, one of the most powerful weapons in the universe. It would be fine, right? This was only a temporary issue, and in a few days everything would be working like new.

Lance groaned and threw his arms against the ground. The blue lion had become a crutch, he knew. That knowledge didn’t make the loss any easier. 

He stood and stretched his back before turning his back on the stream. Dwelling on this wouldn’t accomplish anything. Without any supplies, all there was to do was search for shelter. Lance looked out over the landscape, rushing water to his back. He had come from the right, following a somewhat-clear path from the lions. In front of him, however, the land turned more into a field. The grasses that led to the stream extended ahead, with fewer trees.

Lance walked forward, stumbling through the field as the land sloped downwards and twisting plants tangled around his feet. The woods thickened to his side, more trees filling in the gaps and creating a path on his right. Suddenly, though, they stopped completely.

A jagged wall of rock brought the whole area to a stop.

Lance broke his focus from the ground to take in this new discovery. A cliff cut directly in front of him, sloping in and out as far as he could see. Dark, rough-looking rocks jutted out in all directions.

Curiosity overcame him, and he reached out to feel the wall, surprised by how cool it felt. He trailed a hand along its surface, small grooves guiding his fingers. He continued along the wall, mesmerized by the feeling underneath his fingertips. The dark gray of stone contrasted with bright flashes of blue vines and moss that blanketed the cliffside. The sky, now a dark magenta, left the whole area glowing in the setting sun.

Lance’s gaze trailed all up the wall, which didn’t even raise high enough to surpass some of the trees to his right. Too tall to climb, but short enough that he could see the thickened moss at the top, brightly colored butterflies resting all over. One suddenly took off, significantly larger than the rest, bobbing up and down as it flew off to the left and over the top of the rocks.

Lance looked to his left, where the wall broke forward enough to block off the rest of his view. He approached it, gripping the rocks in his hand as he moved onward, only to find a deep incline in the wall, forming a large hole in the cliffside.

Lance grinned. This was too perfect.

He slowly walked in, careful to watch the ceiling above him for instability, while trying to keep his feet steady on the uneven ground. The cave was almost like a mouth, falling open to welcome him inside.

The whole structure seemed uneven and jagged, with cracks lining the walls, yet still appeared stable. The lingering warmth of outside completely vanished, leaving the cave cool and dark.

Lance rubbed his hands together. This is what he was talking about!

He climbed outside, trying not to run and trip, and took off back towards the field of grass. It would have been great to have Keith’s sword, but the plants were thin enough to not need it. Instead, he grabbed thick handfuls of foliage, twisting his hands around and yanking upwards. Two thick clumps of grass came up, soft red soil beneath giving way easily.

He threw the grass into a pile and continued pulling. Then he scooped up the grass into his arms and marched down into his cave, spreading it out into a long bed. Clumps of dirt still clung to the roots, but at least it provided some extra comfort from the hard ground.

Satisfied with his handiwork, Lance fell back onto his makeshift bed with a content sigh. The adrenaline from crashing and exploring wore off quickly, and he only just remembered to tuck his bayard safely by his side before passing out.  
__________

The next morning left him feeling confused and disoriented. The ground was cold, and his head ached. What the heck?

Memories of the previous day came flooding back, and Lance blinked his eyes open to see a ceiling of stone resting above him. Right.

Well, at least his home held up for the night. That only left him to deal with...everything else.

First things first. His head was aching, leaving him feeling tired and lethargic. He still hadn’t had any water since they were back with the others, and he was definitely starting to feel it. Keith or no Keith, he needed to go to his lion.

Finding his way back was surprisingly easy, since the cave, stream, and field all created somewhat of a triangle, all only a few miles or so apart.

As far as Lance could tell, nobody had touched the lions during the night. Lance still walked out into the field hesitantly, in case someone had been waiting for them. But nothing moved, the field still silently guarded by both lions, neither of which seemed to be working.

“Keith?” Lance called, approaching the red lion. Her mouth sat open, so he peeked inside to find her cockpit empty.

Lance smirked, climbing back down to the ground. It still seemed to be early based on the position of the sun, though Keith had always been an early riser. Still, the lack of _anything_ in the red lion told Lance that Keith had not spent the night in his lion.

Lance had figured the blue lion was still down due to the persistent lack of being able to feel her, but he had been hoping the red lion had woken up. Yet his quick inspection told him that she was no better off than his own.

So they were no closer to getting back to the others. That was fine, but he couldn’t help feeling disappointed.  
__________

His lion held more supplies than he had anticipated. Food rations, water purifiers, basic medical supplies, and a toolkit. Lance looked everything over before deciding it couldn’t hurt to take it all. He clambered out of the lion, trying not to drop anything.

Just as he had gotten himself settled, he turned to see none other than Keith, with a sword pointed directly at his throat.

Typical.  
__________

Days later, and still they remained stuck down here. Lance couldn’t deny that he had been having fun. The weather was nice, the planet was beautiful, and it felt so freeing to be able to breathe fresh air again, to swim in cool water. It was a much-needed reprieve from life in space.

Was he concerned that the lions still weren’t functioning? Not really. So long as he had supplies and they weren’t being attacked, there was no serious cause for concern. And they definitely didn’t have the ability to fix anything from their current position. The others were looking for them, Lance was sure. Sometimes, there really was nothing to be done.

Instead, Lance had chosen to focus on surviving. Honestly, at this point, he could almost say thriving. He spent his days exploring the planet, trying to map out the areas he remembered. With each day he discovered new plants, new birds, new insects, and he had even started naming them.

When he wasn’t exploring, he spent most of his time by the water, swimming or just relaxing while Hunk Jr. munched away at the grass. It was soothing, and it reminded him of his lion in her absence. It was almost a fantasy land, just being alone to enjoy nature. He had always been fascinated by the natural world, and this planet was so new and vibrant. It was hard not to love it.

Sure, he was typically a loud and social person, but after living with the same 6 people for months on end in a castle he couldn’t leave, this was practically paradise.

Paradise didn’t last forever, though. So long as he could keep himself alive easily, there was nothing to be worried about. This planet wasn’t hostile, and it seemed like they were basically invisible from outside threats underneath the ceiling of trees. With the resources necessary to survive, everything was otherwise fine.

But the lions only had so much.

Lance had tried making a fire, honestly. He tried everything he could think of, with still no success. He had enough to last him a few days, but after that…

He couldn’t clean water. He couldn’t cook.

Until that point, the lack of fire was no more than an annoyance. Sure, his cave was cold, and food rations tasted terrible. But those were minor issues compared to the bigger ones looming just around the corner.

So now Lance had to find some way to get clean water. He was aware that Keith had somehow made a fire, since he had bragged the other day about his nice campfire. So if that was the case, maybe he wasn’t even using his water purifiers?

Only one way to find out.  
__________

So Keith had taken his water purifiers with him. And caught Lance sneaking around in his lion. And wanted to kill him.

Things were really looking up for Lance.

He had been hesitant to tell Keith about it before, but now there was no way Lance could turn to him for help. If he had failed to make a fire after his supplies ran out, Lance could admit to himself that he would have sucked it up and asked Keith for help. He wouldn’t have been happy about it, but he would do it.

That was before Keith caught him looting around in the red lion.

Between that and their continuous disagreements since they arrived, Lance couldn’t bear to ask Keith for help. He knew, deep down, that they were a team, and they should be able to rely on each other. But the fear of being reprimanded, or turned away, combined with his humiliation at being unable to take care of himself after he had mocked Keith…

Lance swallowed thickly. He had to do this alone. He had to prove to himself and the others that he was strong.

He stopped relaxing, and started working harder. He worked himself to exhaustion trying to create even a spark of fire, which only left him even more dehydrated. The roar of the stream in the distance no longer relaxed him. It mocked him, letting him know day by day that he was failing.

Eventually, the choice was made for him. Ask for help, risk drinking unpurified water, or dehydrate completely.

The thought of even looking for Keith left him feeling sick. How could he possibly ask for help?

Maybe it would be okay. This planet had been completely safe so far. The animals were friendly, the wildlife was thriving, and neither of them had picked up a deadly disease yet. Clean air, fresh water, mild weather. Aside from obvious differences, this planet really was very similar to Earth.

Besides, it’s not like they would be there much longer. The others would find them within the next few days. It had been nearly a week since they crashed, and how could they form Voltron with two missing paladins?

Lance sighed, grabbed his canteen, and headed for the stream.  
__________

Day seven is Lance’s best day since they arrived. He has water, some remaining food rations, and a nice cave. The weather is beautiful, and his spirits lift a bit.

He spends the day having fun, needing some relief from the stress that had built up. The whole world seems to agree with that decision; birds sing from the trees, small animals jump through the woods and occasionally scuttle by Lance’s vision. A soft breeze leaves the tall grass swaying. The entire world is truly alive.

He’d been stressed over nothing, Lance decides. He’s been drinking this water for about a day and feels completely refreshed. The others would be there in no time, and he hadn’t run into Keith in days.

Everything was fine as could be.  
__________

Day eight is a bit slower than day seven. But, Lance insists, everything is still fine. He wakes up feeling the ache that he awoke with after the first night, and is ready to instantly fall back asleep. But his food rations are running low, and Lance was reducing the amount he ate each day, not willing to risk eating unknown plants. Water was one thing, but there was no telling what any of the fruits and berries here would do. 

He could go back to the lions and check them both over for food, but considering how that went last time, Lance decides against it. 

He leaves his cave to find the day hot and humid, probably the warmest it had been since they arrived. That probably wasn’t helping his situation. As long as he stayed hydrated and cool, he would be good to go again.

So Lance spends day eight floating in the stream, letting the gentle current push him along without him realizing it. The sun and sky are so bright, and so is the world around him, even under a thick canopy of leaves and branches. He lets his eyes drift closed and allows the water to just carry him, not able to muster up the energy to care about where he ends up.

He regrets it later when he realizes he has a long walk back to his cave.

Sure, maybe he should have spent more time on the fire so he could hunt, but he was just too exhausted today. Tonight he would get plenty of sleep, and get back to work tomorrow.

Lance heads back to the cave before it even becomes dark out, and as he drifts off, he feels grateful that at least Keith hadn’t showed up to make fun of him.  
__________

Day nine he isn’t even hungry.

Maybe that’s cause for concern. The slight nausea reminds him of when he would get too focused on his work at the Garrison and forget to eat for hours, until Hunk forced him out of his room for a much-needed meal. So maybe he’s actually _really_ hungry.

Though that doesn’t change the fact that he has nothing to eat, so he mostly just feels relieved.

While day eight had been sweltering, day nine is colder than ever. Was this planet changing seasons? That would be the icing on the cake at this point. Even without food or water, at least the weather had remained mild. If this planet dove into a sudden winter, he would really be screwed.

All Lance wants to do is stay huddled away in his cave where it‘s dark and comfy. But it’s just so cold in there, so he forces himself out into the sun. Honestly, it’s surprising that it could be so cold even with the sun shining so bright overhead. Maybe it really would be winter soon.

Lance ambles along his path to the stream, but feels himself growing exhausted climbing the hill. Well, his bed was made of the grass he had pulled from over here, so he just lets himself flop over on the ground.

He makes a promise to himself to only stay there for a little bit, just enough to warm up in the sunshine before getting to work on food or a fire. But once he was stretched out in the soft grass, he can’t help but drift off.

When he wakes, the sky is darker. Not quite nighttime, but Lance knows he’s definitely been asleep for a few hours. The sky is still clear, only now it’s late enough that the bugs are becoming active. It must be, as that’s the only explanation for how many butterflies are fluttering around.

They had been somewhat scarce since their arrival, with Lance noticing them only a few times outside of finding the stream and cave. Now, though, he is completely surrounded. They crawl up the grass surrounding him, rest on the warm soil, and some even perched on Lance’s arms and stomach. The trees overhead almost seem like a monster now, twisting and writhing as wings and leaves blend together into a sky of blinding orange, small blue flashes from fluttering wings like flickering lights.

Lance lays in the grass, watching the bright orange bugs flutter from one place to the next, gently skipping over his head. They land anywhere and everywhere, with seemingly no goal or destination in mind. It’s strange, he thinks, that they’re all over here, where there are no flowers or water. What are they doing?

Thinking about it is too difficult, so he decides it doesn’t matter.

Lance pulls himself up with a groan and decides it’s best to just head back to his cave. He never went to the stream like he intended, but his canteen still has some water.

He makes sure to drink some before he falls asleep. Staying hydrated is important.

Lance collapses back into his bed, sending a cloud of grass and dirt flying out in the process. It’s not very soft anymore, but he doesn’t feel like fixing it.

He wonders why he hasn’t seen Keith yet. Normally they would’ve run into each other by now. Was Keith okay?

He falls asleep worrying about the red paladin.  
__________

Day ten is...not great.

Lance aches all over. His head is foggy, and his back is stiff. He can’t quite remember why he’s there or what he’s supposed to be doing. Remembering is hard, so he stops trying.

He does remember that Keith is around here somewhere. Lance would ask him what’s going on, but he thinks Keith is mad at him? He’s not sure why.

Lance rolls onto his side and sees the world outside glowing in the sun. Usually everything looks dark and cool, with purple vines and blue moss and gray rocks. Today, though, everything looks orange.

Is there a fire? That can’t be it. It’s too cold for there to be fire.

Lance wants the team. He doesn’t know what’s happening or what he should do, and when that happens, they’re always around to make sure he knows. When he doesn’t have an answer, one of them usually does.

Only they aren’t here.

Where is here?

He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t have anyone to ask.

Lance thinks maybe he should ask Keith for help. Help remembering, help understanding, help existing. He wants so badly to go and ask for help, but when he tries he finds that he can’t walk. He ends up somewhere else, but he’s not sure where that is.

Maybe Keith will come find him.

Does Keith know where he is? Lance is pretty sure he does, but still worries about it. If Keith knew, then why wasn’t he here? Is he okay?

Lance feels his eyes start to water. He doesn’t want to cry, but he can’t help it. It leaves his head feeling foggier than ever and he hates that feeling.

He’s so cold, and confused, and alone. And just so, so tired. He decides he should probably just go back to sleep and figure this out later. He thinks maybe he fell asleep at one point but nothing really has a start or end anymore. Maybe he shouldn’t sleep but he really wants to and he can’t think of a good reason not to.

As he starts drifting off, he thinks he hears something.

“Lance?”

That’s definitely Keith. He might be tired but he knows Keith’s voice. Why is Keith here? Lance thinks he’s saying something else but it’s too much and he doesn’t understand.

It’s quiet. Keith must have left. Lance wants to cry again.

“Lance!” That’s Keith again. He feels something grab him.

Lance’s heart swells. Whatever’s going on, at least he’s not alone anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lance I'm sorry. I'm sorry I do this to you and I'm sorry that I built this really nice world and then made you talk about everything you would do right and then did this. But it's okay because now Keith is here and everything is gonna be totally great from here! No more drama or sadness! Right?
> 
> ...Right.
> 
> Anyways come follow me on [tumblr](https://zurela.tumblr.com/) because they just dropped season 3 stuff at SDCC and Lace's birthday is only a WEEK away and I'm dying, y'all! My life is about to end and it's all because of Voltron. So come die with me or something?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This has gone on long enough. Lance and Keith finally figure out what teamwork is.

Lance loved the ocean.

It only made sense that he was the guardian spirit of water. He always connected with the water, and being in space left him longing for the sea.

But now, wherever he was...it felt just like it.

He drifted, his entire body overcome with warmth, the weightless sensation of gliding along the surface of a wave pulling him down, deeper, deeper, into darkness.

Something was wrong, though. The refreshing sea turned hot, like oil boiling against his skin. The cool blue grew darker and darker, before he was overtaken by nothing but blackness. He couldn’t breathe, salty water filling his throat, leaving him gasping for air.

He wasn’t floating anymore. 

He was drowning.  
__________

Lance was unconscious for three days. 

Keith sat by his side the entire time, coaxing water down his throat and trying to get him to eat, often without success. He was able to keep a fire going with the cover from the cave and the glowing red rocks he found, but it still grew cold at night. 

He kept a near constant watch, only letting himself fall asleep for a few hours here and there when Lance’s fever would drop and Keith was confident he wouldn’t wake up anytime soon. Otherwise, he sat alert at Lance’s side, wiping his face down with gauze soaked in cool water and doing his best to keep them both warm and comfortable.

When it got too cold, and the fire could only do so much, Keith finally swallowed his embarrassment and let himself curl up next to Lance. It seemed to calm Lance down and help him keep warm, and Keith couldn’t deny it helped him feel better too.

Lance hadn’t gotten any worse, but hadn’t gotten any better, either. He would wake up occasionally, only for long enough to roll over and get sick or start rambling deliriously, usually in Spanish. He seemed nearly out of his mind with sickness, completely unaware of where he was or what was happening.

Maybe that was for the best.

Keith almost wished he could forget what was happening, too. With each passing day, his anxiety increased tenfold. The feeling of doing everything you could and it still not being enough was suffocating.

But he swallowed down the fear and kept going. He had to believe they would be okay. If he had been in Lance’s position, there was no doubt his relentless optimism and humor would keep him going.

Keith smiled to himself. He couldn’t let Lance beat him.

As Lance’s fever began to steadily decline, his rambling became slightly less delirious and nonsensical. At first, Keith was relieved.

Then the nightmares started.

His sleep became lighter and more fitful. He would often cry out, body shaking as some sort of new fear took over. Sometimes he cried out for his family, sometimes for his team. Either way, from what he was saying, it sounded like all he saw was death.

Lance cried for help. Cried for grief. Cried for fear, and for loneliness, and hopelessness. Some of it was utter nonsense, some of it was far too real.

He dreamed of being captured by the Galra.

Of being tortured out of his mind.

Of watching the Earth, his home, being destroyed before his eyes.

Of the team being torn to pieces, one by one.

Keith had no idea what to do. He sat by Lance’s side, running a hand through his hair when the nightmares got bad.

“I’m sorry,” he said one night, while Lance shook beside him, tears leaking from his eyes. “I’m sorry we crashed. I’m sorry I left you alone. I’m sorry I was rude, I’m sorry I teased you. I thought this place was totally safe. I got careless. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to make sure you were okay.”

Lance seemed to calm down, relaxing slightly under Keith’s touch.

“I promise I won’t let it happen again,” Keith said.

With each new dream, and each new fight against an evil that wasn’t there, Keith’s heart broke more and more. And still, there was nothing he could do but make sure that Lance stayed alive.  
__________

After days of delirium, and days of nightmares, Lance finally began to come back to himself. He was still far from okay, but was at least becoming more coherent. 

Still, that didn’t mean he completely understood what was happening.

One morning, Keith was jostled awake by Lance standing up beside him and stumbling off towards the entrance of the cave, his body lolling from side to side.

“What are you doing?” Keith called, rolling to his knees to stand up. “You shouldn’t be up.”

Lance either didn’t hear him or didn’t understand, still stumbling forward like a zombie. Just as he began to lilt to the side, Keith leapt to his side and caught him. Lance’s head slumped down, nearly boneless in Keith’s grasp. Keith felt the heat of fever still burning into his side.

“Come on, you need to lay down,” Keith said as he guided Lance back to the bed of grass. Lance tried to fight him, but lacked the strength to do much more than gently push against Keith’s chest.

“Gotta get out,” Lance muttered. “Need to find help...need Keith…”

“I’m right here,” Keith reassured, helping Lance lay down and keeping their hands firmly linked together. “It’s okay now, I found you. You’re safe here.”

“Don’t feel good,” Lance whined, rolling over to bury his face into Keith’s leg.

Keith bit his lip with a grimace. “I know.”

Later that night, Keith woke up again to find Lance missing from his side. He had seemed to do okay that day, remaining mostly calm and sleeping after the incident that morning. Was he finally coherent enough to understand what was going on? Keith didn’t dare hope.

He pushed himself up, trying to see in the dark glow of the cave. The fire had nearly died out while they slept, but the slightly glowing embers in the fire left enough light for Keith to make out a dark figure next to the firepit.

He sighed and made his way over, readjusting the wood in the pit and relighting it with his strange red stones before turning to find Lance slumped over next to him. His hands were black, coated in soot and ash.

“Lance,” Keith said, gently trying to jostle him awake. “Come on, wake up for a second for me.”

Lance’s eyes fluttered open, and he turned glassy eyes to stare at Keith. The previously dwindling fever was back with a vengeance, Keith could tell without even feeling. 

“Gotta make a fire,” he said without any prodding from Keith.

“No,” Keith argued, pulling Lance to sit aside him so they could both face the flames in front of them. “Look, there’s already fire. You don’t have to worry about it anymore. You have fire, and clean water, and food. It’s okay.”

Lance leaned to the side. “Gotta make a fire,” he repeated.

Keith sighed and tugged Lance’s arm, leading him back to bed. “You did it, it’s okay. You made it. You don’t have to worry anymore.”  
__________

Another few days, and finally Lance seemed to be truly on the mend. His fever was low, and hadn’t spiked since Keith found him in front of the fire pit. The nightmares had stopped almost entirely.

Keith was stuck in an internal debate, sitting against the cave wall watching Lance sleep beside him. He had brought enough food and water to last him the few days he had been there so far, but he really needed to go out and catch something soon. But he couldn’t seem to bear to leave Lance alone out of fear that the second he left, he would come back to an empty cave.

Keith groaned and buried his face in his hands before tightening them into fists. There was nothing to be done. Both of them needed to eat. Lance needed food if he was going to get better. And he had been okay enough for over a day now that Keith was willing to risk leaving.

It wasn’t a successful trip. Keith had been eating this meat and drinking this water for over two weeks now, so he knew it was safe. And yet the image of Lance slumped over against a cave wall sat in the back of his mind as he held his canteen over the rushing stream. His hands shook as he dipped his hands under.

Even food seemed to pose a threat. Keith had no luck in finding another one of those black and white animals he had caught before, and everything else left him overwhelmed by paranoia. Even if it had been water to make Lance sick, there was no telling what else was here that could harm them.

Keith came back empty handed.

When he arrived back at the cave, he was surprised to see Lance sitting up, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. Keith froze in place at the mouth of the cave, not daring to move.

Lance turned to face him. “What are you doing here?” he asked with a yawn.

He still looked tired, dark circles under his eyes, but he was awake. He recognized Keith. He was okay.

Keith’s feet moved before he could even think, and he found himself on his knees, arms wrapped around Lance’s neck, nearly crying with relief.

“Whoa, hey,” Lance said, pulling away. “What is going on? I’ve never seen you so happy to see me.”

Keith pulled away to look at Lance. “What do you remember?”

Lance looked away, taking a moment to consider it. He scrunched his eyebrows together, seeming to struggle with it. “Well, I remember crashing. Then I was enjoying my vacation while you went off and did your own thing. After that it gets a little confusing. The real question is, why are you here?” Lance smirked. “You get scared being all alone on the big scary planet?”

Keith huffed and crossed his arms, looking to the ground. Lance was definitely back.

“I’m here because I saved your butt after you drank unfiltered water. You’ve been sick for days. I thought you were gonna die, so I’ve been stuck in this dumb cave with you trying to keep you alive. But clearly you didn’t need or want my help.”

Keith stood up and turned, refusing to look at Lance. Of course nothing had changed. He was fine now, he had fire, he didn’t need or want Keith around-

“Wait,” Lance said, grabbing his hand before he could walk out. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry, my head is just...mixed up.”

Keith whirled back to glare at him. “Your head is mixed up because you needed help, but you didn’t think to even ask for it! You apparently don’t trust me enough, so instead you just made yourself sick, and you almost died -- you _would_ have died -- if I hadn’t happened to come look for you, and I was completely useless. We’re stuck here, and everything was fine but then it _wasn’t_ , and I don’t know how to protect either of us.”

Keith resolutely glared at the ground, fighting back the tears that were threatening to spill over. Now that Lance was awake, all the resolve to stay strong dropped, and the emotion and fear that had been building over the last several days burst forward.

Lancee pushed himself up, leaning against the wall to his side but refusing to let himself waver. He stepped forward, staring at Keith for a moment before pulling him into a hug.

Keith stiffened.

“I’m sorry,” Lance said softly against his ear. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. Thank you for saving me. Please don’t go.”

Tears dripped down Keith’s cheeks, and he let himself bury his face against Lance’s neck.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he said, his voice muffled against Lance’s skin.

“I won’t,” Lance promises.  
__________

“We need to talk about what happened,” Keith said out of the blue.

Now that Lance had woken up and could move, the two of them went out together to get food and water. Keith did most of the work, searching high and low for anything that could be cooked while Lance rested by the shore of the stream and watched. He had insisted on helping, but after becoming dizzy only a few minutes into their search, Keith had ordered him to sit down.

Now it was midday, and still they had nothing. Keith had taken a break, sitting next to Lance as they both sat gazing into the flowing water.

Lance sighed, pulling his knees to his chest and resting his head on top. “I thought we already did that.”

“We talked about me saving your butt after you poisoned yourself. We didn’t talk about why you did that.”

Lance went quiet for a moment. “We don’t need to talk about that.”

Keith huffed, throwing his arms to his sides and kicking at the water in front of him. “Yes, we do, since apparently you don’t trust me enough to ask for help. I saw you one day, sneaking around in my lion, and then you go missing for a few days, and then I find you half dead. What happened?”

Lance groaned, burying his face into his lap. “I couldn’t make a fire. I tried everything and it didn’t work, so I raided your lion for water purifiers since you said you made a fire. I got caught, you got pissed, I made a stupid choice. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Happy?”

“No.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “What do you want from me, Keith?”

Keith grabbed his shoulder and forced Lance to look at him. Lance met his steely gaze with an annoyed scowl, but didn’t pull away.

“I want to know why you didn’t just tell me you needed my help,” Keith said.

“You were mad at me.”

Keith groaned in frustration. “That doesn’t explain anything!”

“It explains everything!” Lance fired back.

“No it doesn’t!” Keith argued. “We’re supposed to rely on each other, and instead you broke into my lion instead of just asking for help when you needed it! And because of that, you almost got yourself killed.”

“See, you’re still mad,” Lance pointed out. “How was I supposed to ask you for help when I knew this would happen?”

Keith sighed, pausing for a moment to collect himself before continuing. “Look, I was mad. I _am_ mad. We got stuck here together, and I know it wasn’t your fault but I was still frustrated. Then you didn’t want to help me, you went off on your own, and I found you going into my lion without even telling me. So I think it’s fair that I got mad.”

Lance didn’t answer, just sat still as stone and watched the water trail over the rocks at his feet.

“But,” Keith continued, “that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t help you. Being mad isn’t...it doesn’t make us any less of a team. It doesn’t mean that you can’t turn to me when you need it, or that I’m going to push you away. And I think that’s been an issue since the beginning, between us, but also between the entire team.”

Lance still remained silent, but his anger seemed to soften. He mostly seemed sad at that point.

Keith sighed. “You’re a good team member, and a good fighter, and a good pilot. But you seem so terrified of failing, or of us getting angry with you, that you just decide to deal with it yourself. You even cover it up with jokes, like you want to direct our frustration at that so you can...control it, or something. But no matter what, the point of a team is that we have your back, and that you have ours. And we all have faith in each other. Do you really think that we -- that I -- would ever refuse to help you, even when you do make mistakes?”

“Are you done analyzing me?” Lance asked, still refusing to make eye contact.  
“I’m just trying to understand!” Keith fought back. “I want you to talk to me, because being able to rely on each other is more important...than _anything_. And I know that’s a lot of pressure, but it’s true. And I don’t know why you won’t let yourself rely on us. On _me_.”

Lance seemed to contemplate that for a moment. Finally, he closed his eyes, then turned to look at Keith. “When you thought the Galra were tracking you through your blood, why did you leave?”

Keith reeled. “What?”

Lance continued. “You were ready to run away without a word. You took on the Blade of Marmora by yourself, and you didn’t tell any of us about what was going on until after that. Even if you didn’t know, you suspected it for a while, right? And you never said a word. Why was that?”

Keith sighed. “I was afraid you would hate me.”

Lance shook his head. “No, you just said we’re a team, and we both know that being Galra wouldn’t change anything. Sure, we were surprised, and definitely confused, but the only one who was angry was Allura, and even she’s moving on from that. So I’m gonna ask again. Why did you run? Why did you do those trials?”

Keith ran his hands through his hair, which had now been crudely tied into a short ponytail as the day grew warmer. “Because I had to.”

“What does that mean?”

Keith gripped his hair in his hands, pulling small clumps of hair out of its tie in the process. “It felt like I had to be alone. It was about me, not the team. I had to work it all out by myself.”

Lance nodded. “You felt like you needed to be strong.”

Keith started and turned to Lance. “That’s not-”

“Not for us,” Lance interrupted. “You had to prove to yourself that you were strong. You were ready to take on whatever came at you, even if it felt like there was no way you could possibly bear it all. And you needed to remind yourself that if anything ever happened, you could do it alone.”

Keith realized that this wasn’t just about him anymore.

“This team is the most important thing, you’re right,” Lance continued. “But the idea that sometimes we have to do things alone is...it’s _miserable_. I hate it more than anything in the world but I know it’s possible.”

Keith deflated. “Yeah.”

Lance glanced at him. “Would you have come back?”

“What?”

“If the Galra had been tracking you instead of the black lion,” he elaborated. “Would you have come back and let us help you?”

“...No.”

Lance nodded, but kept his gaze straight ahead. “That’s what I thought.”

Keith pulled his knees to his chest and buried his face in his arms. “It was...horrible,” he said as tears began pricking at his eyes. “I don’t know what was worse: thinking that I was the one putting everyone in danger, or thinking that I couldn’t come back.”

Lance scooted closer to Keith so that their legs brushed up against each other, then wrapped an arm around Keith’s back. Keith didn’t fight him off.

“It’s okay to cry about it, you know.”

Keith elbowed him, but didn’t look up or push away. “Shut up.”

Lance laughed, but it was watery and cracked. “I would have hunted you down.”

Keith sniffled, raising his head slightly. “I would have helped you if you had told me you needed a fire.”

Lance let himself fall back to lay on the stony ground so Keith couldn’t see his own tears. “So then why even decide that we’re alone when it hasn’t happened yet?”

Keith fell back beside him. “Great question.”

The two of them sat there, staring up into an endless sky of orange leaves, without another word. Looking back, it felt so stupid, planning for a disaster that hadn’t even come. It wasn’t carefulness, or bravery. It was just cold, dizzying paranoia. And all it had to offer was more problems.

At that moment, though, they had each other. And the fear that had built up and created a home deep in their hearts receded just a bit.  
_________

It wasn’t long before Lance began to shiver against the cool ground, and Keith had forced him back near a fire before he could get even sicker. The rest of the day was spent gathering grass for Keith’s own bed, boiling water, gathering supplies. The cold, empty cave started to feel more liveable.

Maybe that wasn’t enough. Maybe they needed to be prepared for some horrible storm. Or maybe it was too much, and the two of them would be rescued tomorrow, and all that work was for nothing. Either way, it wasn’t worth dwelling on.

It felt right for now, and that was what mattered.  
__________

For the first night in days, Keith and Lance lay in separate spaces on opposite sides of their makeshift fire. Lance couldn’t remember much from when he was sick, but laying there then left him feeling like something was missing.

“Hey Keith?” he called out lowly out of fear of waking the other up, on the off chance that he was already asleep.

This was Keith they were talking about, though. “Hmm?” he hummed in response.

“Promise me that no matter what, we’ll keep each other safe down here.”

Silence.

Finally, after a few moments, another soft hum. “Yeah. Of course we will.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“Pinky swear?”

“Lance, go to bed!”

“Not until you pinky swear.”

Lance saw Keith’s shadowy arm raise across the cave, his pinky stretched out. “Pinky swear.”

Lance smiled. “Goodnight, Keith!”

“Goodnight, dork.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday Lance!!!! Sorry I made your birthday....like this. Hopefully season 3 treats you better?
> 
> Y'all I am in total _wilderness_ right now, and I climbed (partially) up a mountain today and it's like this place is separate from reality and _still_ I am determined to keep this posting schedule. I'm so proud of myself I can't believe I've kept this going!
> 
> Anyways please [come follow me on tumblr](https://zurela.tumblr.com/) because I am so overwhelmed by Voltron stuff right now and I just need to surround myself in its splendor. Also I'm thirsty for attention ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All aboard the train to emotions town!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, it's here. Season 3 is here and it's been out for almost 9 hours and I haven't even seen a _second_ of it because I was so determined to finish this. Also because I know that once I watch it I'm gonna have a billion new ideas and I'll probably cry a lot and this will be the last thing on my mind.

Lance woke from sleep slowly, one sense at a time. Dark rippled rock formed an arching ceiling overhead, lit only by the remaining flicker of a campfire. The cold dampness of the air was only held away by the heat of the fire and the warm grass beneath him. The occasional pop of sparks punctuated the hum of rushing water in the distance.

His head throbbed, and his body ached, and the lingering feeling of sickness mixed with the memory that they were still stuck here left Lance ready to go straight back to sleep. Instead he sighed and lifted himself up, stretching his back and causing a number of cracks and pops in the process.

The cave was as dark and quiet as always. The pile of grass that made up Keith’s makeshift bed was empty.

Lance froze for a moment. Had he dreamt the whole thing? Did Keith decide he really was better off alone? No, that couldn’t be true. They promised, Keith _pinky swore_. Lance could never forget that.

Still, why was he gone? The dark purple of the sky outside indicated that it was still early -- early enough that not even the birds had started chattering yet. Had something happened to him? A new wave of panic overwhelmed Lance, leaving him breathless and dizzy as he fell back to the ground.

Before he could spiral into a full-blown panic attack, the soft trudge of shoes against the ground perked him up. Sure enough, Keith was back, looking unhappy but overall unharmed. Lance still took care to look him over carefully, but it was hard to pinpoint anything in the dim light.

Arms braced beneath him, he moved to push himself up, only to flop back over like a wet noodle in the dirt. Keith startled at the unexpected sound, but surprisingly didn’t rush over to Lance’s side like he had the days previous.

“Idiot,” he called out. “What do you think you’re doing, moving so fast? You’re still sick, take it slow.”

Lance grimaced and pushed himself up, slower this time, pausing to wipe away at the gravel stuck to his cheek. “Where have you been? You look like someone just kicked your dog. Well, you don’t have a dog. Kicked your knife?”

Keith ignored his teasing. “I was looking for food. I know it was the water that made you sick, but...I still want to be careful. We don’t know what the plants around here can do, and I haven’t managed to catch anything else.”

“Hmm,” Lance hummed, a thoughtful look on his face. “Alright. I’ll take care of it. You get a good fire going, yeah? Looks like we need more wood, and a sword will do a better job with that than a gun.”

Lance pushed himself into a standing position and strolled past Keith.

“Wait!” Keith called, grabbing Lance’s arm before he could leave. “You shouldn’t be up. Stay here and rest some more.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Keith, it’s fine. Sure, I still feel like garbage, but I’m not going to collapse and die or anything.”

The word _die_ just made Keith look more nervous. Lance sighed.

“Look. I won’t be far. I’m just gonna make a quick run to the lions, then I’ll be around here. I won’t go far. Please. You helped me, you _saved_ me, so please just let me do this.”

Keith paused for a moment, then sighed and dropped his head. “Fine. If you’re not back within a few hours then I’m coming to hunt you down.”

Lance grinned. “Fair enough.”  
__________

Chopping wood with a sword wasn’t easy, but it was possible. Keith wiped sweat away from his brow and stretched the ache out of his arms. There was no doubt he would be sore tomorrow, but at least they wouldn’t have to worry about wood for a while. 

Seeing as it actually didn’t take as long as he expected, it couldn’t hurt to look for more of those fire-starter rocks. It had been somewhere around here…

The forest thickened to his left, evident that he had found the right path. Keith elbowed his way through, steadily losing visibility as the rising sun was blotted out by the dense trees overhead. A red glint caught his eye, and Keith pushed forward, stumbling and falling on his knees in front of the same clearing as before.

Pausing to look around, the rest of the area became more apparent. Aside from this small cavern, the walls extended up tall and wide, further than Keith could even see. Even though this small clearing left some rocks exposed, the cavern seemed to extend deeper.

Was this whole wall concealing this, just under the surface?

Only one way to find out. Keith struck the rock with his sword, chipping away at the black surface. It didn’t take long for the familiar red glow to shine through, and the next strike from his sword sent a shower of sparks flying from the wall.

Keith hummed. “Good to know.”  
__________

Loaded with an armful of wood heavier than he was and a collection of fire stones piled on top, Keith stumbled his way back to the cave. This was not helping his soon-to-be sore arms one bit.

Well. He could use some muscles anyways.

As he drew closer, Keith’s heart rose in his throat in anticipation what might be waiting for him when he got back. The sun was high in the sky now, probably nearing late morning. If Lance wasn’t there when he got back, he would need to start searching.

The cave was even darker than it was this morning, the last remains of a fire flickering dimly as a cooling container of water sat above. Lance’s weird pet bug climbed the wall lazily, seeming perfectly content to stay in the cave.

Yet no Lance.

Keith dropped his armful of wood, letting them clatter to the ground and roll onto his feet. How long had he been gone? It was hard to tell since he lost track of time at the rock cavern, but it couldn’t have been too long. How early had it been when Lance had left? Did he bring water with him? Did he even say where he was going?

“How’s it going?”

Keith leapt a good foot into the air, only to land on a thin log and go flying back onto the ground. Rocks and chunks of wood dug into his aching back. 

Rolling onto his knees with a grumble and a string of curses, he looked up to see Lance standing above him with a huge grin on his face.

And...fish?

One arm was braced proudly on his hip, while the other extended out to the side with at least a dozen fish strung along a rope.

Keith gaped. “Wha...what?”

Lance smirked. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Where did you get all those fish? _How_ did you get them?”

Lance beamed. “Just because I can’t make a fire doesn’t mean that I’m totally incompetent, and that stream gets a lot bigger once you go down a ways. You got wood? Come on, let’s feast!”  
__________

With so many fish and no way to keep it fresh, their only solution was to eat it all. Keith hesitated at first when he pulled them away from the fire, not ready to trust this planet’s resources or his own cooking skills, but Lance started eating like he hadn’t had a meal in days. Which, to be fair, he really hadn’t.

Keith shrugged and dug in too, surprised by the savory taste. Fish on Earth was usually soft and light, but this was tough and hearty. Maybe he was projecting after so long without a proper meal, but this was some of the best food he had ever had.

Lance’s excited hum voiced his agreement. “Whoa, this is amazing! Keith, you’re a great cook!”

Keith bit into his fish again to hide the blush that rose to his cheeks. “If you say so.”

His nervousness went ignored as Lance slung an arm onto his back. “Seriously, how did you get so good at this?”

Keith shrugged. “It’s probably just the fish. It’s not like we have any way to season it. Fish doesn’t usually taste this good plain.”

The red flush in his cheeks betrayed him. Lance looked him over carefully before breaking into a grin. “You’re hiding something from me.”

Keith blushed even harder and turned his face away from Lance’s gaze. “Shut up, I am not.”

Lance only clapped his hands against his legs and pushed himself closer. “You are! Do you like to cook? Oh my gosh, are you a baker? Do you and Hunk secretly trade recipes?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “No, idiot. Nobody knows. I...yeah, I like to cook. I like to grill. It’s relaxing and I get a good meal out of it.”

Lance practically _squealed_. “Let me guess, you used to hold big family barbecues back on the ol’ farm in Texas, right? Please tell me I’m right.”

Keith rolled his eyes, still regretting his decision to divulge that piece of information to his teammates. “No, we didn’t have a farm. We had a ranch.”

Lance clutched at his heart. This was the best day of his life.

“And besides,” Keith continued, before Lance could tease him even more, “I learned to cook after I left the Garrison.”

“How come?” Lance asked.

Keith shrugged. “Well, I was alone out there, and I didn’t have a kitchen, so a fire was really my only option for cooking. All I was trying to do out there was figure out what happened with the Kerberos mission, and with that I didn’t get much new info to use very often. I had to find something to keep me busy.”

“Oh.” Lance’s voice dropped, finally settling down as Keith talked.

“And,” Keith said, lowering his head to the fish in his lap, “I didn’t take care of myself for a while. I was...I didn’t know what to do. Shiro was gone, I was kicked out of school, and I was living alone in the desert. Sometimes, early on, I had gone so many days without eating or sleeping that I couldn’t even stand.”

Lance hummed and turned to gaze at the fire, resting his chin on his knees. “What changed?”

“I guess,” Keith sighed, raking a hand through his hair, “I finally realized I wasn’t accomplishing anything. Either Shiro was gone and I needed to move on, or he wasn’t and I needed to figure out where he was. I had my time to grieve, to figure things out, but eventually I had to just… _do_ something. So I learned to cook, and started looking for information about where he went, and built my bike.”

Lance went quiet, just watched sparks drift up from the campfire.

Keith turned to him. “Can I ask you something now?”

He nodded but still avoided eye contact.

“Where did you learn to fish?”

Lance smiled softly, as if he knew the question before Keith even asked. “I used to fish with my dad a lot back on Earth. Some wire and a few shiny objects from the lions, plus some weird berries growing by the water, and it worked pretty well. It doesn’t seem like they have many major predators around here, so it wasn’t too hard to attract them.”

He sighed then, stretching out his legs in front of him and staring into the rock above them. “My dad would wake me up at the crack of dawn, just to go sit in the water in total silence. It’s funny, too, because we almost _never_ caught anything, but he always insisted we were doing everything right. I didn’t really believe him, but all his old tricks worked even on some weird planet on the other end of the universe.”

Keith nodded. “You miss it.”

“Of course I do,” Lance said, struggling to keep the waver out of his voice. “At the time I would always complain. It was cold, and early, and I didn’t even like fish as a kid. But I never told him I didn’t want to go anymore. Even if we didn’t catch anything, and I hated just sitting there quietly, I was just happy to spend time with him. I’ve got a lot of siblings, Keith, so getting alone time with anybody was rare. It was our thing.”

Lance chuckled, but the sad expression on his face couldn’t be washed away that easily. “It freaks me out, honestly. This planet. It’s so much like Earth, and when I was out there today, it almost felt like I was there. Like when you have dreams of the same place, and it never looks quite the same as you remembered, but that feeling you wake up with is exactly the same. That’s what it felt like.”

Lance grabbed another fish and bit into it viciously, frustration taking over his eyes. “Only it’s not real. This isn’t Earth, and this isn’t actually a fish. It looks kind of like a fish and tastes kind of like a fish but it isn’t a fish. This thing has no name, and this planet has no name, and my dad is on Earth. And I’m here.”

Keith shrugged. “What’s wrong with here?”

Lance shook his head. “Nothing! And that’s the problem!”

He wasn’t usually this vocal. Keith wanted to poke and prod and get him to talk, but at the same time felt like he was approaching a wild animal. He had never been good with people. Sometimes things just didn’t need to be spoken out loud, but sometimes that was the only way to defeat it.

But that wasn’t his choice to make, and guessing the wrong one could do more harm than good.

“It’s just,” Lance continued, “this place really is great. It’s not Earth, but it’s close and I _like_ it. I like the weird bugs and the water and all the bright colors. But every time I start to enjoy it, I remember that I can’t rely on it. Just like I can’t rely on this fish in my hands not to poison and kill me in a few hours, I can’t rely on this place to be here. Because the others will find us, and our lions will be fixed, and then it’s back to defending the universe.”

Keith hesitated, but decided to push on. “That’s a bad thing?”

Lance groaned in frustration. “I mean, beyond the whole ‘fighting a war I didn’t choose to be part of’ thing? It’s been alright so far, but I don’t know what comes next. And I hate it. So far it’s just been fighting robots and rescue missions. But Keith, this is a war, and it has been for thousands of years. We all know there’s a lot of horrible things coming, and none of us ever _say_ it. Even when I’m shooting at a drone, and I know it’s just a bunch of metal and wires...god, it has a face. What happens when the day comes where it’s not just a robot?”

“But they’re horrible,” Keith argued. “We both know how many people they’ve hurt, some of your best friends included.”

“I know that!” Lance protested. “But I can’t be okay with that. I _can’t_. Even if it’s some nameless face in the crowd, or Zarkon himself. It’s a life. And isn’t that horrible? That I know what he’s done, that I can see Allura’s pain and the innocent lives he’s ruined across the entire universe, and still get sick at the thought of killing him? Because I’ll be honest, Keith, I don’t think I could do it.”

Keith rested a hand on top of Lance’s, braced against the hard ground. Lance startled and turned to him, tears beaded in the corners of his eyes.

“It’s okay,” Keith assured. “You’re not horrible. Not wanting to kill others? That’s not horrible, Lance. It probably makes you stronger than the rest of us.”

Lance snorted and wiped at his eyes. “Oh yeah? How so?”

Keith looked down. “When I see what they did to Shiro, or see the pain they’ve caused to Allura, and Coran, and Pidge, I know I could do it. I would do it, and I even tried to, when I took on Zarkon by myself. Even knowing I _am_ part Galra doesn’t change anything. But the fact that you know what they’ve done, you see it every day, yet you can’t bring yourself to that level? That’s strength. _I_ should be the one to feel guilty, because I _could_ do it.”

Lance lifted his hand from beneath Keith’s grasp and rested it on Keith’s shoulder in his own comforting embrace. “Hey now, don’t say that. That’s how it is. Someone has to do it.”

“I just,” Keith continued, “I can’t see those things and distance myself from it. Not from you all. You’re all I have. You have Earth, and your family, and you’re so sure of yourself. But this? Voltron, and this team? It’s the only thing I have. We got dragged into a war we didn’t choose to be part of, and I would _still_ rather be out here than anywhere else.”

Lance smiled and leaned back. “Well, that’s understandable. Even as shitty as the reason is, exploring space in giant lions is pretty cool.”

Keith smiled. “This place reminds me of Earth, too.” He pulled another fish into his hands, but didn’t bite in just yet. “Not in the way it does for you. When you first went off, and I was alone, camping and cooking on the fire and trying to figure things out by myself, it was like I was in that desert all over again. And I liked it at first. I like being alone, and it was peaceful and quiet and I was doing fine.”

Lance hummed. “Sounds like you.”

“But when I found you, burning up and half dead” he said, “it felt like having my stomach ripped out. Because that desert was peaceful, but mostly it was just lonely. I’ve…” he trailed off, grabbing at his hair in exasperation as frustrated tears sprung to his eyes. “I’ve never had a problem with being alone, you know? I had Shiro at the Garrison, but before that I moved from place to place constantly. I’ve never had much of a family, not for ages, and I’m not exactly the friendliest person.”

His gaze remained almost stuck on the fire, eyes wide and confused. “You guys are the closest thing I’ve ever had to a real family. And _that’s_ why I know I could kill the Galra. Because I would do anything, _anything_ to protect you guys. It’s...it’s the best thing. It’s the _only_ thing.”

Lance smiled. “I guess we’re lucky, then.”

Keith whirled, face twisting in confusion and frustration. “How are we lucky? We’re both stuck here, and we don’t have the team or a home. You almost died!”

Lance nodded. “That’s true. But think of all the places we could’ve ended up! There’s no enemies, no Galra, no hostile species. No desert, no tundra, no endless rain or burning heat. We’re alive. We’re okay. Everyone is okay.”

Keith shook his head as tears trailed down his face. “You don’t know that.”

“Shut up, yes I do. I know it like I know that my family is okay, on the other side of the universe.”

“How do you know?”

“Because everything else isn’t even an option.”

Keith sighed. Even beginning to let thoughts of what could have happened to the others left his throat burning. In order to survive, they had to believe everyone was okay, or _they_ wouldn’t be okay. Everything else wasn’t an option, not for them.

“I don’t get it,” Keith said. “Even with all of this nonsense, you can still be optimistic. And I’m just sitting here crying like a baby.”

Lance’s expression softened. “You know it’s okay to cry, Keith.”

Keith shook his head.

Lance sat up and grabbed his wrist. “You do know that, right? I cry all the time, and I don’t think that makes me weak. Sometimes you have to, just to get it out. I can see the good in this situation because I’ve also acknowledged the bad stuff, and I’ve let myself _feel_ it. Being able to feel that pain, and acknowledge how much it hurts, and let yourself cry about it, but then going on anyways? That’s hard. I don’t think I _could_ think positively about all this if I didn’t also think about how much it sucked.”

“Okay, then what about everything else?” Keith questioned. “Finding the blue lion, getting launched into space and away from your home, being sucked into a war you have no part in? Do you consider that lucky?”

Lance hesitated, then shook his head. “Not that part, no. But the rest of it? Sure. Maybe I hate this war, and I miss my home. But I’ve also helped so many people. Regardless of whether or not I came, these places suffered. And they would have kept suffering if we didn’t help them. But we did.”

Keith was speechless. Lance’s previous dreary demeanor had faded, and now he looked warm and content. He sounded sure of himself in a way that Keith didn’t think he could ever be.

“Besides,” Lance said, oblivious to Keith’s awe, “Without Voltron I wouldn’t have this weird, second family that’s just an alien uncle, a space dad, a princess, and some clueless teenagers. I wouldn’t have met Coran, or Allura, or Shiro, my idol. I wouldn’t get to know Pidge, not the way I have here. I wouldn’t get to see Hunk grow into the happy and brave guy he is now. And I wouldn’t know you.”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “I thought you said you knew me from the Garrison?”

Lance nodded. “Yeah, I did. But I didn’t really _know_ you. I thought you were stuck up, with some holier-than-thou attitude and a stick up your ass.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“ _But_ ,” Lance continued, “I was wrong. Sure, you’re not great with people all the time, and you’re kind of a hothead.”

Keith scowled. “Still waiting for a compliment here.”

Lance laughed. “You’re also a huge dork, though. And you’re super awkward but you clearly care, a lot. And you’re protective, and strong, and you have a big heart. You know what you want and you go for it. I made you my rival before because I wanted to be your equal.”

“And now?”

“I still want to be your equal. But in terms of your strength, and your bravery, not just as a pilot. Not as your rival, but as your friend.”

Keith smiled. “You idiot. You’re already there.”

Lance laughed. “That’s definitely possible. You still need to work on your impulsiveness.”

Keith shoved Lance gently, but let it go unchecked. “Maybe you were right. We are lucky.”

Lance glanced at him. “Oh yeah?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I think if we hadn’t landed here, we both would have a lot of stuff still bottled up.”

Lance clapped him on the shoulder. “Nice talk, buddy.”

Keith smiled and nodded. “Nice talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yayyyy emotions! Okay now I'm gonna go watch season 3 before I explode because _someone_ is sending me their reactions and I'm ready to punch her or maybe myself. Hope you enjoyed this! Hope season 3 doesn't provide stuff that's completely different from the characterization here!
> 
> I have a tumblr. It's [@zurela](https://zurela.tumblr.com/). Go there if you want to make an unknown author happy. (That means me!)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance messes up, then Keith messes up, and now there's one really big mess to clean up.

Red woke up.

Just for a moment, Lance detected a slight movement before she was still again. But there it was, the undeniable yellow glow of her eyes. She didn’t move again, just sat sprawled over in the same haphazard manner she had been stuck in since the crash, but it was enough.

Red was awake.

They might have finally had a way out of there.

Lance had been by the lions looking for more supplies to use as fishing gear. The broken bits of metal and debris that lay strewn across the cockpits of the damaged lions were small, shiny, and seemingly disposable enough to make perfect lures. Keith wasn’t there, having decided to try his hand at hunting again, on the off chance he managed to find another one of those strange animals he claimed to have caught before.

He could have been anywhere, and there was a chance the two wouldn’t encounter each other for hours. Lance finally seemed well enough to go off alone for more than a few hours without being presumed dead, so Keith had finally relented and let them separate for a bit.

Red might not last that long.

Not hesitating to even consider another option, Lance clambered up the Red Lion’s bulky frame and nearly launched himself into her cockpit. Sure enough, the dashboard was lit up, though many of the lights remained flickering and fuzzy. A static hum filled the air, so any hopes of contacting the castle just yet were snuffed out.

Lance made up his mind, taking up Keith’s usual spot to look over the bits of information he could make out on parts of the screen not distorted in the wreck. It wasn’t much.

Gripping the handles on either side, Lance pulled back to see if the lion could move, at least enough for now to get her sitting upright. Now that she was awake, it was possible that he and Keith could do enough repairs to have her back up to speed and ready to get them out of there.

Suddenly, Lance’s ears began to ring, as if the sound surrounding him had turned to liquid and was spilling into his eardrums. The working panels all began to warp and distort, before going completely dim. The static went silent.

No, no, no no no no no no _no_ -

Red had rejected him.

At least, that’s what it felt like. Nearly nonfunctional, damaged, and thrown over, the red lion was still loyal enough to Keith to reject Lance’s presence.

Lance huffed. Fine, if that’s how she was going to play it, so be it. Let Keith fly his own dang lion. Not like he was trying to help, or anything.

After a few more attempts, pulling at the controls and pushing at random buttons, it seemed that she had indeed shut him out completely. Lance pushed himself up, rubbing the ache out of his head and leaping out of the cockpit back to the dark ground outside. 

Time to find Keith.  
__________

Keith sat crouched in a tree, his flight suit torn and snagged all over, sword brandished in his left hand. His legs were nearly asleep, and the crick in his back would surely be sore later, but still he remained completely frozen.

A fuzzy black and white animal, nearly the size of a dog, lazily chewed on some leaves growing at the trunk of the tree.

It was bigger than the previous one had been, likely a fully grown adult whereas the previous was probably still young. It hadn’t spotted Keith yet, the angle too steep for it to turn its head in his direction. Unfortunately, that meant it was also impossible for Keith to get the drop on it without crashing through a series of interwoven branches.

If it just moved a few feet forward….

A rustling noise, followed by a _thud_ , sent the creature running off into the bushes, completely out of sight.

Keith sighed before scooting closer to the tree trunk. His initial plan had failed, but maybe something bigger was coming by. The rustling grew louder as the unmistakable thump of feet crept forward. Keith drew his sword, prepared to lunge…

Lance stepped into the clearing.

Keith groaned, smacking his forehead against the smooth bark of the trees before leaping out to the ground.

Lance shrieked and fell back as Keith landed before him. “Why do you keep doing that?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Why do you keep sneaking around?”

Lance huffed, crossing his arms and folding his legs in front of him. “I’ll have you know, I was not sneaking around. I was trying to find you, but _you_ were sneaking around in a tree.”

With a chuckle, Keith reached out and offered a hand, which Lance used to pull himself to his feet, brushing the dirt and leaves from his armor.

“Why were you looking for me?”

Lance paused, then perked up and started jumping up and down, blabbering too quickly for Keith to understand. Before he could push further, Lance grabbed his wrist and started pulling him forward, zigzagging around trees and leaping over bushes.

“Hey,” Keith called, “slow down! What’s going on?”

Lance turned to him with wide, excited eyes. “The red lion woke up!”

This time, it was Keith’s turn to grab Lance’s wrist. The two of them sprinted all the way there, not knowing if they were going quite the right way, only moving as fast as their feet could carry them in the general direction of the crash spot.

It had taken Keith at least an hour to get to his hunting spot from their cave, yet they reached the lion in no more than 20 minutes. Keith stumbled out from the dense woods, vines tangled around his feet, launching himself across the loose soil to reach his lion.

The two of them climbed in, and Keith’s body went sliding across the floor as the slippery mud of his suit came into contact with the smooth metal floor. He climbed into his seat, gripped the handles, and pulled.

Nothing.

He sighed, pushing back the hair that been loosened from its tie on their run. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “It’s okay Red, come on, it’s Keith. Wake up.”

Still, nothing changed. No flicker of light, no hum to life, nothing to indicate she was even alive.

Keith slumped over as the adrenaline worse off, heart racing and chest heaving in exhaustion. “Lance, really? You dragged me all the way here for a dumb prank?”

He turned around to face Lance, who had gone pale, eyes wide and face blank.

Keith cursed and jumped up to grab him. “Hey, shoot, are you okay? God, we shouldn’t have run that fast to get here, you’re still not-”

Lance grabbed Keith’s shoulder and looked up into his eyes. “It wasn’t a prank,” he whispered.

Keith blanched. “What?”

“It wasn’t a prank,” he insisted. “The red lion really was awake, I’m not kidding. I...I…”

“Hey,” Keith interrupted, tightening the grip on his shoulders. “Calm down. Take a deep breath. What’s going on? What happened?”

Lance inhaled deeply through his nose before letting the air whoosh out, choppy and wavering. “Okay. I came here to get more fishing stuff, and I saw her move. Her eyes even lit up! Everything was kinda messed up in here but it was _working_ Keith, I swear it was working. So I sat down and tried to sit her up, but I guess she rejected me, so I went to find you. I don’t know what happened.”

Keith released his grip, stepping back and running into his seat. “You tried to operate it?”

Lance nodded. “I didn’t know if it would last, and I saw her moving before I got in, so I figured it would be best to at least get her off the ground so we could try and do some repairs, but she just...shut down.”

Keith felt his face grow warm. “So you didn’t come get me immediately?”

“No, I thought-”

“No,” Keith cut him off, “you didn’t think. You just did it. You didn’t think when you decided to barge into a Garrison hospital, or when you climbed into some giant robotic lion hidden in the bottom of a cave, or when you leapt in front of a _bomb_ like some kind of human shield. You say I’m impulsive? At least I know my choices have consequences!”

“I never said they didn’t!” Lance argued, his face growing red. Whether it was anger or embarrassment, Keith couldn’t say.

“Well, do you consider those? Do you realize how these things impact others? I get that maybe you just see a chance to inflate your already-gigantic ego, or to show off, or to extend your fake-Earth paradise vacation-”

“Are you saying I did this on _purpose_?!”

“But this is outside of you,” Keith continued. “When it comes to this, when it comes to _war_? Being part of a team? You can’t do those things anymore.”

Tears welled up in Lance’s eyes, but he grit his teeth and forced them back. “So what was I supposed to do? Hope that she stayed awake for long enough for me to come find you in the middle of nowhere? I made the best choice for that moment!”

Keith nodded. “Sure, maybe you did. But it was the wrong choice beyond that, and that’s the problem. It’s never about what matters beyond that moment. Maybe climbing into the blue lion felt right at the moment, but now we’re stuck out here, fighting a war. Maybe jumping in front of Coran helped him, but then you were nearly dead while the castle was taken over by the Galra. And maybe you thought you were helping the red lion, but now we’re still stuck here.”

“I...I can’t…” Lance trailed off, his eyes falling to the floor. His frame shook, and he didn’t seem to even acknowledge Keith’s presence.

“You can’t what?” Keith pushed, fighting to keep from getting in Lance’s face.

“It’s too much...I don’t...do you really think I still want to be here? I spent days starving and dying of thirst, then ended up poisoning myself just to stay alive. I know you were stuck looking after me, but it wasn’t exactly a great time for me either. And this place...God, Keith, it looks so much like Earth. I can’t even bear to look at it sometimes. I just want to leave, I just want to go home, I want to see the rest of the team and know they’re okay, I want to eat stupid space goo and know it won’t kill me, I want to feel like myself again, I want to get out of here!”

Lance’s head sprung up, and Keith gasped as he took in the tears freely flowing down Lance’s cheeks, his eyes wide and unfocused. “Lance-”

“I need to get out of here! I...I held it all back, and it was fine, and I could keep going, because I need to be strong, but...I’m sorry Keith, I’m sorry I broke your lion. I’m sorry I made us crash, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m _so sorry_ -”

Keith lurched forward to grab Lance, but he slipped away like a snake and tore out of the red lion’s cockpit. Keith watched him retreat, watched him run into the woods and stumble away. The sky was growing darker as the day grew later, and heavy clouds blotted out any remaining sunshine.

Keith stared. He should go. He should go find Lance, and apologize, and make sure he’s okay, that he knows where he’s going, that he doesn’t hurt himself or get lost.

Keith stared.

Then he collapsed to the ground, pulling at his hair as an anguished scream ripped from his throat. And he cried. He cried for his own stupidity, for his temper, for driving everyone away. He thought about how much it must have hurt Lance to hear those things coming from someone he was supposed to be able to trust, and he cried harder, cried for both of them.

He had to get out of there. His throat burned, and even though he hadn’t eaten all day he felt like he was going to throw up. Keith paid no mind to the world around him, stumbling from the cockpit of this stupid, broken lion.  
__________

First he headed for the cave, not surprised when Lance wasn’t there. He clearly didn’t want to see Keith. Grabbing a stick from the ground outside, he went back in and wrote out a message in the dirt, hoping Lance returned soon.

_I know you need space. Went to go cool off, be back soon._

_I’m sorry._

And he left, running into the woods with no goal, no destination, nothing.

This was what he did. He let people in, hurt them, drove them away, and ran. Anyone who stuck around long enough to get close either got hurt or left, and he didn’t know which was worse.

Lance was right, this planet sucked. It was too alien to be safe, but too much like Earth to feel distant. It was dangerous for the sake of the unknown, but it was absolutely terrifying for the sake of being too known. Keith loved it and hated it at the same time, and that made him want to leave more than anything.

Keith didn’t know how long he ran. He stumbled forward, slashing his sword mindlessly to keep the plants out of his way and to let out his frustration. At some point it had started raining, and the soil underfoot grew wet and slippery. The world around him was completely unfamiliar, but even if it was recognizable, it was too dark to tell. Even if he wanted to find his way back to the cave they had taken up residence in, Keith doubted he would be able to find it.

Eventually, his body grew exhausted and his run turned into a lazy, stumbling jog. Keith had no clue where he was or how long he had been running. The ground grew steeper and more uneven, and just as he was ready to pause and catch his breath, his foot caught on a rock and sent him sliding in the mud.

A sharp pain stretched across his eye, and he gripped at it, feeling something warm and wet trickling out. In the remaining low light, dark drops splattered against the rocks, mixing with the rain and trickling into inky mud.

Keith groaned and tried to pull himself back up, only for his right foot to collapse beneath him. He fell back to the ground with a cry, stabbing his sword into the ground to brace himself and avoid taking out another eye.

There was nothing to do anymore. There was nowhere to go, and no one to help.

Utterly defeated, Keith crawled along the ground to the nearest tree, hoping the dense foliage that typically blotted out the sky would hold back the rain. Not that it mattered, as his hair was already dripping, creating small white spots as drops washed away the mud that caked his armor.

Keith let his body fall to the ground, too tired to bother trying to warm up or dry off. His eyes fluttered closed, somehow ready to fall unconscious even like this.

Something rustled.

Keith perked up. “Lance?”

No response. Keith rolled onto his knees and tried to peer through the darkness, but it was impossible to make out anything. The sound grew louder, and the sound of branches snapping became clear.

“Lance, I’m sorry, please-”

A growl.

Keith went silent and froze. A large beast stepped out, unlike anything Keith had ever seen, on this planet or anywhere. There was no way to distinguish any particular features through the dark and rain, but the faint outline of a snout bounced up and down, sniffing the air. Below that, two small patches of white stood out against the otherwise shadowy figure: two long fangs protruding from its gaping mouth. From Keith’s position on the ground, it was a great deal taller than him, with a sturdy body to support its towering form.

The closest thing Keith could liken it to was a vicious, primal boar with a bear’s body. It snarled, inching closer and closer to Keith’s face, yet he remained frozen on the ground, hoping this thing would lose interest and leave since he was too terrified to move. Even with his sword gripped in his hand, it was clear there was nothing he could do; this thing was too massive, too wild, and Keith was stuck there, cowering and helpless and half blind.

Keith knew fear. Fear was losing Shiro with no explanation, or finding out he shared ancestry with his alien enemies, or standing alone against the most ruthless dictator in the universe. But fear was also organized, and it could be viewed from far away. When Keith was afraid, he ran in head first, ready to take on whatever came his way.

This, though, was pure terror. And even in all his attempts to be strong, with his team and in this war, he couldn’t do a thing. And he hated it. When it came down to it, in the face of pure panic, Keith just shut down completely.

Keith didn’t want things to end up like this. He didn’t want to be stuck out here, he didn’t want to die like this. He wanted his team. He wanted his lion. He wanted the strange futuristic castle-ship that had become home.

He wanted _Lance_.

The beast roared and lunged forward, and Keith raised his sword in a shoddy attempt to protect himself, though there was little hope of that plan succeeding.

Then another sound, not a snarl. Something different.

Then the beast toppled over.

Then Keith collapsed to the ground, a sudden rush of tears mixing with the raindrops pattering down on his face. His head rolled to the side, and there stood Lance, his bayard extended out in front of him. One eye was still closed, the gun pushed up against his face, a wrinkle in his eyebrows. Keith sobbed, and Lance dropped his position and rushed over. 

He gasped at the blood trailing down his eye, somehow still distinguishable in the mix of mud and rain and tears.

“Keith! Are you alright? Did that thing get you anywhere?”

Keith just kept sobbing, managing to choke out a “sorry” in between his hiccuping cries. Lance shook his head and grabbed Keith’s face between his hands, forcing their eyes to meet. 

“It’s okay,” he soothed, “I know you’re sorry. It’s okay. Just tell me if you’re alright, yeah? Can you stand?”

Keith sniffled and nodded. “I’m okay, I just twisted my ankle. I might need some help.”

He rubbed at his eye before pulling his hand back with a hiss, glaring down at the blood that coated his fingers. Lance grimaced and ripped a small piece off of the sleeve of his flight suit.

“Here, put that on your eye,” he instructed. “Can you open it?”

Keith blinked, trying to force his eye open against the pain. It stung, and blood swirled across his vision, but at least he could see.

“I’m good,” he said, voice quiet and raspy. “Will you help me stand?”

Lance ignored him, pushing himself onto his toes and turning his back to Keith. “Come on. Hop on.”

“Lance, I-”

“Please just hop on,” he insisted. “You need to keep pressure on your eye, and we’ll have to go slower if you try to walk. Come on.”

Keith obliged, rolling onto his knees and landing on Lance’s back with a thump.

“Oof!” The sudden force knocked the air from his lungs, but he laughed and braced his arms around Keith’s thighs. “You ready?”

Keith nodded against his neck, arms draped over Lance’s shoulders. The world tilted beneath him as Lance stood, and Keith swore for a moment he saw a small orange butterfly at his feet.

But no, it was too cold and rainy for that. The blood and dirt in his eyes were messing with him, so he just let them fall shut. The warmth from Lance’s back seeped into his chest, though the cold rain still bit against his back and left him shivering.

Lance was probably freezing. And exhausted. Yet he still came for him, saved Keith’s butt after everything Keith said to him. This wasn’t right, this wasn’t fair. Guilt bubbled in Keith’s throat and he was utterly defenseless against it, so desperate to apologize until he was hoarse but unable to even choke out a word-

“I can practically hear you being emo, buddy. Cut that out.”

Keith choked on his breath. “Lance-”

“Keith.”

“Just let me apologize!” he protested in the loudest voice he could muster. “I know you said it’s okay, but I still need to say it. You didn’t deserve to hear those things. I was mad and I lost my temper, and I know it was out of line. I...I always do this. I lose my temper or say the wrong thing and push people away. I know the impact my actions have on others, and I still make the same mistakes.”

“That’s all it was, Keith. A mistake.” Lance rubbed his knee in an attempt at comfort. “I made a mistake, too. You were right, and I should have come to get you first. So I’m sorry.”

Keith shook his head. “You don’t need to-”

“Yes, I do,” Lance cut him off. “I know you’re just going to keep making yourself feel bad, but I do need to apologize, just like you needed to. We both made mistakes, and we both apologized for them. So now it’s okay.”

Keith’s head was reeling. The pain, the stress of nearly dying, the relief at being saved, it was too much. After everything that had gone wrong, Lance still helped him. More tears leaked from his eyes and dripped onto Lance’s shoulder.

Lance shook him a bit. “Hey, what’s wrong? It’s alright.”

“I don’t understand,” Keith cried. “I’ve only been rude to you since we met. I played into your dumb rivalry thing, and even after that died down I was still rude. I pushed you away and you almost died, then when I yell at you, you just come save me? It doesn’t make sense.”

Lance chuckled. “Keith, are we friends?”

“I don’t-”

“Just answer the question.”

Keith sighed, burying his face into Lance’s neck and relishing in its warmth. “Yes.”

Lance hummed, and the vibrations of his vocal cords rumbled against Keith’s forehead. “That’s why.”

Keith fought the tears away, keeping his eyes buried into Lance’s neck. He had said Keith needed to keep pressure on his eye, and this was much better than holding some muddy cloth there.

“When I first got to the Garrison,” Lance started suddenly, “I was so excited. I wanted to be the best in the class. I wanted to be the best pilot they had ever seen, but I wasn’t ready for how hard it was. Sure, I knew it wouldn’t be easy, not at all, but my ADHD set me back a lot. And it was a total slap in the face.”

Keith shifted. “What are you-”

“But I kept going,” he continued. “I pushed harder and harder and harder, and I was working my way up. And I was fine with that! I knew it would be hard, and I loved it. I loved being a pilot, and working hard for something I dreamed about, and hearing how proud my mom was when I called home and told her how much I was improving. It was okay.”

He sighed, pausing to heft Keith higher onto his back. “But then you were there. And you were so cool and talented, and I admired you the way I admired Shiro. Only, when I talked to you, you didn’t seem to care at all. Heck, I made you my rival and you still had no clue who I was. So yeah, it hurt. I decided that you must be the worst. I was at the bottom, struggling my way to the top, and you were already there. It didn’t even seem like you were trying, you could just do it. And you didn’t have time for untalented cargo pilots like me.”

“And now you’re stuck with me.”

Lance laughed. “And now I _know_ you. I realize now that it’s not about you, it never was. I just projected my own insecurities onto you, and those never went away even when Voltron came together and we became equals. You were still something to strive to, but something mocking, telling me I would never reach it.”

Keith shook his head. “You have, I swear you have,” he assured, his tone nearly begging. “You’re a really great pilot.”

Lance went quiet for a minute, then took a deep breath. “Look. I’m telling you this because I want you to know that I’m not the same person I was when we left Earth, and neither are you. You still annoy the heck out of me sometimes, and I’m not quite over being jealous. But if you had said those things to me back on Earth, or when we first left, I would have left you to rot and never looked back.”

“And now?”

Lance hummed again, the same pleasant feeling rumbling against Keith’s skin. “Now I just shot the scariest animal I’ve ever seen, and I’m freezing and soaked and filthy, but I would do it all again if I knew you needed me to. And that’s not just because we need you to form Voltron.”

Keith hiccuped, lacking the words to respond to something like that. All he could do was squeeze his hands on Lance’s shoulders. He hoped that was enough.

“Come on,” Lance announced, letting Keith’s legs slide down his waist. “We’re back. Let’s go make a fire and go the fuck to sleep.”

Keith nodded against his side with a relieved laugh. “That sounds like a great plan.”

It was fortunate that they had just stocked up on wood, because anything outside was thoroughly soaked. Keith built a sturdy base while Lance picked out the two largest stones he could find, slapping them together almost joyfully.

Lance looked up at the blood covering Keith’s eye, using his hands and some of their boiled water to wipe away at the mess. He grimaced.

“It’ll scar.”

Keith sighed. “Great.”

“I think it’ll look badass,” Lance said with a wicked grin.

Keith huffed out a laugh, then rolled to his side and crawled to his bed, letting his back face the fire. It was almost numb from the rain, but Keith felt a silent relief at having an excuse to face away from Lance.

Something suddenly collided with his back, and he craned his neck up to see Lance there, his chest pressed to Keith’s back.

Lance smiled sheepishly. “I’m cold, and the fire only does so much. Besides, I know you did this when I was sick. My turn to return the favor,” he said with a wink.

Keith groaned and flopped back over, but he couldn’t fight the blush that rose to his cheeks, nor the pleasant warmth that built in his chest.

In his half-conscious state, he immediately flipped over to rest his head against Lance’s side. Lance yelped in surprise and asked him something, but Keith was unconscious before he could figure out what the question was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY this slow burn starts to pick up speed. I'm sorry I make things hard on my sweet boys but also things are about to get pretty intense so I'm probably not as sorry as I will be later. These boys have bonded together enough! Time to get someone new up in this mix! :O
> 
> I bet you didn't know this, but I have a [tumblr](https://zurela.tumblr.com/)!!! And you should go check it out!!! So we can talk about gay cartoons!!!!!!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone's here?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: brier mentions of blood and vomiting (both are very non-graphic!)

Keith woke to warmth; something soft and safe that he hadn’t felt for weeks now. Or maybe it had been even longer than that, back before Voltron, before the desert, before Shiro was gone. Even with the solid ground and damp air, the feeling was nice enough to send him dozing back off for just a few moments longer.

When he woke again, his other senses finally returned. The loud chirps of insects, the lingering scent of campfire smoke. Warmth. Overwhelming now, like the usual coolness of this cave had been chased away completely. Keith rubbed his eyes and rolled over.

Lance was curled up against him, still in the same spot he fell asleep in, only now with his arm wrapped around Keith’s stomach and head on his arm.

Keith’s face flooded with heat, and he counted his lucky stars that Lance wasn’t awake to witness it. Yet even through the burning embarrassment, he didn’t want to move. That warm feeling still bloomed, and the thought of getting up was, surprisingly, an upsetting one.

Keith’s eyes trailed over Lance’s sleeping face. Though he was relaxed, with his mouth gaping open like a fish, the scrunch in his eyebrows displayed his discomfort. Keith sat up to nudge him awake, only to feel that same warmth — that _heat_ — on his skin.

Fuck.

Keith ran his hand through Lance’s hair and onto his forehead, cursing himself out in the process. He was supposed to be watching out for Lance, but ended up forcing him to run out in the rain and carry Keith like he was some damsel in distress. And now, because of his stupid temper, Lance had a fever again and would probably want Keith to stay away from him and-

“Hey.”

The stress building in Keith’s head left his hands tensing in Lance’s hair, apparently strong enough to wake him up. Keith pulled his hands away and backed up so as to not hurt Lance more.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I’m sorry I- um. How do you feel?”

Lance smiled and let his eyes flutter shut. “Bad. You know how it is.”

“Yeah, I’m really-”

“Shut up,” Lance said with a chuckle. “We talked about this. No more feeling bad, remember?”

“But I-”

“Keith. It’s not your fault.”

Keith huffed, standing up to grab their container of clean water. “Fine. Just take it easy, we still don’t know how long we’ll be here, or when Red will wake up next.”

Lance stilled, then sighed as the smile faded from his face. “Yeah.”

“Hey,” Keith scolded, “it’s not your fault either. Remember? No feeling bad.”

Lance sat up to stare at Keith. “Right. No feeling bad. What’s the new plan?”

“Well, you should stay here and sleep some more. I’ll go look for more food.”

Lance glanced him over. “You’re not exactly in top shape either, samurai. We have some food saved up, let’s just relax for a day.”

“We shouldn’t relax, we need to-”

“Shhhhh.”

Keith groaned. “Lance, come on, we should-”

“No,” Lance cut him off again. “Shush!”

Keith went silent, waiting for Lance to do...something. Instead, he just seemed to go completely still, his face molded into total focus.

“Do you hear that?” he asked with a small tilt of his head.

“Hear what?”

Lance nodded, more resolutely this time. “Listen.”

Keith listened. The chirps outside, the wind in the leaves, the roar of the stream-

Wait. The stream was never that loud from this point. And if he wasn’t mistaken, that hum was growing even louder.

Keith’s eyes grew wide and met Lance’s equally shocked face. “Is that?”

Lance shook his head, but couldn’t fight the smile on his face. “It can’t be.”

The two of them sprang towards the mouth of the cave, Keith grabbing Lance’s hand and pulling him along. The sunlight outside assaulted their eyes, and Keith had to squint through the bright light in order to make out the outline of something in the sky, growing larger and larger as it descended to the land on their right.

Slowly, his vision cleared and he could make out more and more. A long figure, the glint of metal in the sun, silver and black and-

Purple. Dark purple, nearly matching the morning sky. Two long spikes protruding from the front.

The Galra were here.  
__________

Once the ship landed, a fleet of small drones flooded from every angle and began sweeping the land, scanning various trees and landforms. Keith and Lance sat perched behind a large boulder, watching as the drones scattered all across the landscape, peppering the bright colors of the forest with flashes of silver.

“This is bad,” Keith announced.

Lance scoffed. “Oh really, you think? I thought this was great.”

Keith ignored him. “They must have noticed the lions, or maybe traced that portal somehow. We have to hide, it won’t be long before they find us.”

Lance said nothing, just continued to watch the drones move.

“Lance, come on, we gotta-”

“Why are they all over the place then?”

Keith paused and glanced to the drones again, watching as they floated all over, climbing cliffsides and swooping between trees, scanning everything they passed.

“They must be looking for us,” Keith explained. “They don’t have our exact location.”

Lance shook his head. “I don’t think so. Why aren’t there any actual Galra looking around for us? If they knew we were here, they would know it’s safe to come out.”

It was true, they had yet to see anything emerge from the ship but drones. The doors had been sealed, and the ship hadn’t moved at all.

“It’s like they’re...waiting,” Lance mumbled.

“Waiting? For what?”

Lance nodded towards the drone closest to them, which was scanning over an orange butterfly that rested on a leaf. “They’re scanning everything, like they’re testing it. They want to see what’s on this planet.”

The drone that was scanning the bug stopped, moving forward a few feet before its sensors detected some new lifeform to inspect.

Keith nodded in realization. “They want to know if it’s habitable. They’re not here for us, they’re here to make a colony.” 

It made sense, considering the amount of resources they could access here. Keith recalled the gleaming red stones he found so long ago, and suddenly the foreignness of this planet became even more apparent.

Still, that didn’t mean they were safe. “There are drones everywhere, though. The lions aren’t very far away. They’ll find us eventually.”

Lance turned to him, a wicked grin on his face. “Not if we stop them before they do.”

Keith glared at him. “And how exactly do we do that? We can’t exactly fight all of these guys ourselves, especially not like we are right now.”

“Who said anything about fighting them?” Lance asked with a roll of his eyes. “I know we don’t stand a chance if we rush in there. We need something bigger.”

“Like what?”

“Like an explosion.”

Keith froze, then sagged against the boulder with a groan. “Be serious, Lance. Our lions are down, and all we have on us is my sword and your gun. How are we going to make an explosion big enough to take that ship out?”

“Ah,” Lance said as he elbowed Keith in the side, “that’s not all we have, though. Come on, Keith! This planet has a ton of crazy resources. We can definitely rig something up.”

Keith huffed and looked away. This was ridiculous. “Even if that was possible, neither of us knows how to make explosives.”

Lance went quiet.

Keith reeled on him. “Neither of us knows how to make explosives, _right_?”

Lance shrugged. “I was a destructive kid. I liked seeing things blow up.”

Keith gaped. Lance never failed to surprise him, though perhaps this particular thing shouldn’t have been too surprising. Lance had an explosive personality, though not in the way Keith did. Where Keith was brash and intense, Lance was like a thousand different feelings at once. Where Keith was a bomb, Lance was a fireworks display.

Together, the two of them could blast these Galra to shreds.

Lance seemed to take Keith’s silence for judgment. “I’ve never hurt anyone!” he insisted, crossing his arms with a pout. “I just think they’re fun.”

Keith shook his head and smiled. “I’m not judging you, I’m just...amazed.”

“Amazed?”

“Yeah,” he affirmed with a laugh. “I knew you were wild, but this...sometimes I forget how amazing you can be.”

Lance froze, his entire face turning bright red, before he burst out laughing. Keith slapped a palm over his mouth, careful to keep them hidden from the drones that surrounded them.

Lance pulled his hands away. “Sorry, I just can’t believe how much of a sap you are sometimes.”

Keith rolled his eyes, but a blush rose to his cheeks as well. “Whatever. What’s the plan?”

Lance poked up above the boulder and surveyed the scene. The drones were more dispersed now, though that meant they had covered more ground. Keith rose alongside him.

“We probably only have a few hours before they find the lions,” Lance whispered. “Maybe less to find the cave, but it’s pretty well hidden, so that hopefully isn’t a huge risk. I need to go find some stuff, meet me back at the cave as soon as you can.”

Keith nodded. “What should I do?”

“Go back to wherever you got those red rocks,” he instructed. “Get the biggest one you can find. Carve one out or grab a bunch if there’s no huge ones.”

“How big?”

Lance looked the ship over, measuring its size against the tall trees around them, which seemed to shrink in its presence.

“Big.”

Keith nodded. “I’ll see you soon. Don’t get caught by the drones.”

Lane turned to him and nodded. He paused, watching Keith, who was crouched over him and poised to sprint. Before he could run off, Lance grabbed his arm, pulling himself up beside him.

Lance still didn’t speak, just continued to stare at him, before leaping forward and wrapping his arms around Keith’s neck.

“Stay safe,” he whispered.

Keith hesitated under Lance’s tight grip, before wrapping his arms around Lance’s stomach, resting his face against Lance’s neck. The feverish warmth of his skin was reminiscent of the night before, with Keith hoisted against Lance’s back.

“You too.”  
__________

Finding the rock quarry wasn’t difficult, as Keith had been there a number of times by now. This time, however, the challenge came with the drones that scoured the planet. He finally got ahead of them a few miles back, but it wouldn’t be long before they reached this spot, and soon, the lions.

If they reached that point...Keith didn’t want to think about what would happen.

For now, though, he had to have faith in Lance, faith in his plan, faith in their ability to work together. At this point, it was all he had. Yet it didn’t feel forced, either; Keith had come to trust Lance with his life, and began to trust himself with Lance’s life, even after everything.

The same stones spilled out of the cave as always, but none of them were any larger than Keith’s fist. They weren’t even close.

Chipping away at the wall could produce something bigger, but getting something large enough to work would take more time than they had.

So Keith got onto his stomach and crawled inside.

Despite the brightly shining rocks, the small hole in the wall remained nearly pitch black. It was impossible to see forward, but the glow of stones extended as far forward as Keith could see, perched on the ground as he was. They dug into his hands and knees, but still he pushed onwards.

The cavern opened slowly, first giving Keith the space to move to his hands and knees, and soon after, the ability to sit up almost completely straight.

Stones extended beyond their trail on the ground, forming piles along the edges of the walls, some formed into the walls themselves. The entire cavern was now lit around him, and the walls curved inward while the ceiling grew even higher. It was almost like a room itself, a circular dome with glittering crystals covering every surface.

And in the middle sat a long, jagged stone.

It was nearly the size of Pidge, buried in the ground like Excalibur in the stone; like a giant blade, beckoning Keith closer.

He grinned. This was perfect.

Getting it out was harder, as Keith had to straddle it on his back as he squeezed along the floor, before opting to push it ahead of him when the ceiling grew too low. The light finally caught it, sending a bright glow shining all over the trees as Keith and his giant crystal emerged from the cavern. It was difficult to tell how much time had passed, but the sooner Keith returned, the better.

The run back wasn’t as simple, either. Sleuthing through the woods in avoidance of drones was easy on the run over, but became significantly harder with a person-sized stone on his back. The weight of it seemed to give evidence of its incredible density, but Keith wasn’t willing to chance knocking or dropping it and causing it to shatter.

The drones were more dispersed, at least, though that didn’t settle the unease in Keith’s stomach. How much time did they have?

When he returned to the cave, Lance was already there with a pile of items and materials surrounding him. Some were familiar, like the rope from their lions, but some, like the container of mysterious liquid, were completely new to him. Lance sat on the ground with his legs crossed, fidgeting with some plants in his lap.

“Where did you get all this?” Keith questioned in awe.

Lance shrugged. “All over. Had to mess around with a few things to make sure it would all work.”

Keith quirked an eyebrow, finally noticing the scuffs and soot covering Lance’s armor.

“Have you been blowing yourself up?”

“No!” he defended, though his appearance seemed to state otherwise. “I was using those rocks to spark some stuff, but I’m fine, I swear.”

So he had been blowing himself up. Keith couldn’t find it in himself to be surprised. “How did you even know what to get?”

Lance shrugged again, with just one shoulder, his attention too focused on the things in his hands. “While you were out hunting and trying to fix your lion, I was exploring. Played around with a bunch of different stuff. A lot of it I had to test, since I didn’t have a way to spark it at the time, but I think I’ve got what I need. Did you get the stone?”

Keith rolled it off his back, letting it gently clamber to the ground and join Lance’s pile.

Lance smiled. “Hell yeah, that’s perfect! Come help me out, we don’t have long.”

They spent the rest of the day constructing the bomb, with Lance barking out orders while Keith did what he asked while making sure they both stayed fed and hydrated. Lance’s energy seemed to wane fairly quickly, and it wasn’t long before he was leaning against Keith as he worked. Yet the fire in his eyes never faded, and even the slight shake in his hands couldn’t fight the deliberate attention as he worked late into the day.

“Come on, Lance, let’s just go to sleep. We haven’t been found yet, so the lions probably haven’t been found either. We can do this tomorrow.”

Lance whirled on him. “No, this has to happen tonight. If they finished their scans, that means they know this planet is safe. Listen,” he instructed with a nod towards the outside of the cave.

Keith listened for the sounds he heard this morning, but found nothing but the usual roar of the stream in the distance.

“There’s nothing. The drones are gone, probably back in the ship. They’ll be out tomorrow, scoping this place out for themselves. We need to do this tonight.”

Keith nodded, though nerves began to bubble in his chest. “Alright,” he reluctantly agreed. “How much longer will it take?”

Lance wiped at the sweat on his forehead. “Not much longer now. I just need to get everything into place.”

Keith allowed Lance to keep working, helping him stay sitting as the exhaustion took over. The heat of fever was still there, but Lance resolutely refused to acknowledge it. Keith prayed for this to be over soon, so he could force Lance to get some rest without worrying about being found by the Galra.

“We’ll relax,” Keith said into Lance’s hair, as his head had fallen onto Keith’s shoulder hours ago. “When it’s all over, we’ll relax like you wanted to. We could both use it.”

Lance chuckled against his side. “Thank _god_.”

Lance was right, it only took around another hour to finish. Once Lance was sure of himself, he set the bomb back and collapsed onto his back. Keith glanced down to him.

“You sure it’ll work?”

Lance nodded. “As sure as I can be. Otherwise, we’ll have to improvise.”

“When do we leave?” Keith asked. “You should get some rest first.”

Lance paused, sitting up to look between Keith and the bomb. “About that…” he muttered, glancing away with a sheepish look.

“What?”

Lance looked to him for a moment, then pounced on Keith, pinning him on the ground. He reached over for some leftover rope on his left and began binding Keith’s hands behind his back, before flipping himself around and doing the same to his feet.

“What are you _doing_?” Keith cried, struggling against the bonds. It was no use. Lance made these tight, clearly intending to keep him from escaping.

Lance stood once Keith was sufficiently tied, then grabbed the red bayard from the ground and tossed it to the back of the cave, out of sight. 

“Lance, _what_ -”

“This one’s on me,” Lance interrupted. “You stay here where you’re safe. I’ll be back soon.” He grabbed his own bayard, then scooped the bomb into his arms and began walking out of the cave.

“Lance, come back here and untie me!” Keith called in desperation. “Why are you doing this? Let me help you! Lance! Lance!!!”

But he was gone.  
__________

Lance crept through the bushes, wary of any wandering drones that might not have returned to the ship. It was hard to make out any details with the glowing crystal on his back, but everything seemed clear.

The ship wasn’t far from the cave, and the walk was thankfully easier than the walk to the lions. It was a blessing for Lance’s aching bones, but also left him open and exposed. He had to get in and get out as fast as possible.

The ship slowly came into existence. First the outline of spikes poking above the trees appeared, blotting out the light of the moon. Then came glowing lights, leaving the typically soothing blueish purple of the wildlife illuminated in a sickly magenta. It wasn’t calm and deep like the trees, or soft and warm like the sky in the evening. It just looked poisonous.

Sure, Lance was doing this to keep them safe, but he couldn’t fight the wave of sadness at the thought of this planet being colonized. Maybe it was because it reminded him so much of Earth, leaving him terrified that this could happen to his own planet someday. Maybe it was an appreciation for how beautiful and unique this place was on its own.

Either way, he was the only one who could protect it.

The ship had landed in a large clearing, though it was so wide that some trees had been knocked over in the process, and a number of flowers and plants lay crushed beneath the metal. The sight sent another flare of protectiveness rushing through Lance’s veins.

Creeping slowly and carefully, he tucked the bomb against the ship, leaning it against the metal but leaving it exposed on its other side. No alarms sounded, and the lack of a barrier or security drones told Lance that they truly hadn’t been discovered. The Galra would never see this coming.

Something tugged at Lance’s heart at that thought, but he forced it back down. This was war, this was a life or death situation. It needed to be done.

Lance sighed and scuttled backwards, crouching behind a boulder and extending his bayard.

He pulled it against his face, braced himself, and pulled the trigger.  
__________

Keith crept along the ground of the cave, wiggling like a worm in an exhausting pursuit of his bayard. The glow of the campfire didn’t extend all the way back, leaving him rolling along the ground in hopes of bumping against it. His muscles were exhausted, and he probably looked ridiculous, but he had to keep going.

Leave it to Lance to do something so reckless. He could get caught, or captured, or they could force him to hand over the lions, or-

Keith’s knee knocked against something solid.

Spinning himself over, he grabbed his bayard behind his back, letting it extend into its sword form. It took some maneuvering, but Keith managed to tilt the blade inwards without stabbing himself or cutting a hand off.

Careful, now…

The ropes began to slacken before falling away completely. Keith moved to his feet then, sawing away at the tight knots that had been cutting off the circulation in his feet. Just before he could break through the last few layers, a sound at the mouth of the cave startled him.

Lance stumbled in, blood trailing down his face and blast burns littering his body. He glanced briefly to Keith, an apologetic look taking over his face, before collapsing to the ground.

Lance!” Keith called, swiping through the remaining knots with one fierce slash and tripping his way over to Lance, his numb feet sending him falling to his knees. He crawled the remainder of the distance, pulling Lance against his chest and looking him over.

A large cut to his temple left blood trailing down his face, though it seemed to have nearly clotted over. Burns and scrapes covered his skin, and his flight suit had been essentially torn to shreds.

“Lance, you idiot!” Keith yelled, his distress turning itself into anger. He carried Lance over to his bed and grabbed the water bucket, ripping strips of fabric from his own flight suit to use as makeshift towels and bandages. “Why do you keep doing this? You can’t keep expecting me to save you, especially after you tied me up and left me here…”

Keith ran his fingers through Lance’s hair, feeling for any major bumps or cuts that may lend themselves to a concussion. The one on his forehead seemed to be a surface wound, but there was really no telling how bad things were until Lance woke up.

Next came his limbs. Keith trailed his hands along Lance’s arms and legs, feeling for any broken bones or something out of place. Luckily, his armor seemed to deflect most of the damage, but of course Lance hadn’t worn his helmet.

If he hadn’t been wearing his armor, Keith suspected Lance wouldn’t have come back at all.

“I can’t believe you did this,” he lectured to Lance’s unconscious form. “You were already sick, and now this. Did you blow yourself up? Were you attacked? You said you thought it would work! God, that ship better be completely destroyed if you ended up like this. I swear, if I see a single robot tomorrow, I’ll kill you myself. The Galra won’t even have time to get to you.”

Keith continued working, wiping away at the blood and trying to clean as much dirt from Lance’s skin as he could. “I guess it would still be a Galra that got to you if I did that, though,” he muttered. “How stupid would that be? Every day you fight Galra that try to destroy you, and the one that ends up killing you is the one that lo-”

Keith cut himself off with a sigh, letting his forehead fall against Lance’s chest. “Please be okay,” he whispered, tears dripping down his eyelashes and onto the white armor beneath him. “Please just be okay.”  
__________

Keith woke with an ache in the back of his head and sore wrists. Memories of the previous night came flooding back, sending him springing up from his spot next to Lance. Keith hesitated, then held his hand over Lance’s open mouth. Warm breath pushed against his skin.

Keith sighed in relief and sat up. Torn between making sure Lance was really alright and checking for any Galra, he opted to head outside. If Lance was alright, then he would need all the sleep he could get. And if he wasn’t…

Keith wanted as much time as he could possibly have before having to face that reality.

Finding the landing site wasn’t nearly as difficult as it had been before, as a thick trail of smoke marked the destination. A few meters out, black soot coated the trees. Even further in, and some plants and trees had been blasted away. The red soil grew darker and darker as Keith drew closer.

The ship was absolutely obliterated.

There wasn’t even anything left. A black crater caved into the ground and some charred bits of debris were the only indication that something had even been there. The whole scene was clouded in smoke, as if the planet itself was on fire. No wonder Lance looked the way he did.

Keith wandered around the outskirts of the explosion site, his gaze catching on a splash of red on a gray boulder. Lance must have hidden behind it, but even the trees around it were split and charred. He hadn’t been attacked, he really had just blown himself up.

But why? Why was he so close in the first place? It seemed like the first rule of bombs was to set them off once you were far away. Was he caught?

There were no answers in this pit, that was for sure. Keith made his way back to the cave, noting the scent of something burning that tainted the fresh air outside. When he made it back, Lance was already awake, sitting up against the cave wall and prodding at the fabric wrapped around his head.

“Stop that!” Keith called, though his commands went ignored. Keith rushed over and grabbed Lance’s hands, causing him to startle at the contact. Keith opened his mouth to speak, but Lance beat him to it.

“I’m sorry,” he cried, his voice hoarse and cracking. “I’m so sorry, I know you must be pissed, but I had to do it. I knew…I knew the bomb would work, and I knew it would be huge. That crystal was way too huge not to work, I didn’t think you would find one that big. But it’s not like the technology that the Galra or the ship have. It...it had to be detonated by hand. I had to shoot it, I’m sorry. I know it was stupid but it was the only way and I didn’t know if I would come back but I had to keep you _safe_ -”

His voice choked out of existence as he began to cry before breaking out coughing. Keith felt his forehead, noting the fever that was even warmer than before, before placing a hand on Lance’s chest. His breath seemed to rumble in his lungs, probably due to the explosion and smoke.

Keith grabbed a tub of water and passed it to Lance, who tried to lift the whole thing up to drink. His arms shook under the weight, though, and Keith ended up having to hold it for him.

“Okay,” Keith soothed, rubbing his hand on Lance’s back. “It’s alright. The Galra are all gone now, so don’t worry about it. You can just stay here and rest, and I’ll make sure we have food and water, and everything will be fine. The others will be here soon.” The shake in his voice betrayed those promises, but it was all Keith could think to do.

Lance lifted his head from the bucket while Keith continued to try and comfort him, and he tilted his head in confusion. A sad smile spread across his face, tears still pooled in his eyes. “I can’t hear you.”

Keith’s stomach dropped to his feet. “What?” 

He grabbed Lance’s cheeks and turned his head from side to side, finally noticing the blood dripping from his ears. Keith had missed it before, assuming the blood trailing down his neck had been from his head.

Lance shook his head. “I can’t hear anything. I was hiding behind a boulder pretty far away so I survived, but _wow_ that was a big explosion. I’m surprised I can even still see, it was so bright. I don’t...I don’t know if it’ll ever come back…”

Lance began crying again, occasionally sputtering out to choke on his breath, and Keith pulled him back into his arms, rubbing his back and resting their foreheads together. Lance was shaking all over, and Keith fought through his natural desire to avoid physical contact. He cradled Lance there, gently rocking him back and forth while Lance continued to sob, occasionally pressing a kiss into Lance’s hair.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, even though Lance couldn’t hear him. “It’s alright, we’ll be okay. It’s okay.” Keith needed to hear it as much as Lance needed to feel it.

Lance looked up at Keith’s own troubled expression, and his face crumpled once more. “I know that look, Keith, I know you’re blaming yourself, or maybe me, or maybe you’re just mad. Please don’t be mad, I did what I had to do, I’m sorry, they would have killed us, killed this planet, and now I…”

Lance gulped and gasped a shaky breath, seeming unable to maintain his composure. “I killed them all…”

He pitched forward, and Keith placed one of their empty water buckets in front of him just in time for Lance to hack and choke into it, tears streaming wildly down his cheeks.

“I killed them, Keith. I killed all of them. I know I had to but I don’t even know who was _inside_ and-”

He retched again, but was cut off by a sob. After a few minutes of the same routine, his body fell limp against Keith, who pushed the bucket aside and ran his hands through Lance’s hair.

They sat there for what felt like hours, Lance sobbing and Keith doing his best to help, giving him sips of water and holding him close and rubbing his hair. It was tangled and greasy, slick with sweat and matted with blood, the heat of his fever still radiating through.

Keith wasn’t faring much better, his own personal mess of dirt and blood and tears. They both needed to cool down and shower.

Keith rose to shaky knees and pulled Lance up onto his back, carrying them both towards the stream. Lance began to protest at first, but after realizing Keith wouldn’t budge, he gave up and relaxed.

At the stream, Keith stripped himself and Lance of their armor and waded into the rushing water, reminiscent of when Lance had been swimming so long ago. Lance stiffened under the cool water, but relaxed soon enough, clinging to Keith in exhaustion. Once they adjusted to the temperature, Lance drifted away and let himself float on his back, careful to keep his ears above the surface, and Keith followed suit.

They let themselves float for awhile, careful not to be drawn away by the stream’s flow but not fighting it, either. The cool water contrasted against the warmth of the sun that flickered between the gaps of the trees.

Bugs and birds swooped by in every direction, buzzing beetles and black waterfowl with long yellow beaks chasing them. Puffy clouds drifted by, seeming almost blue against the now pink sky. Orange leaves fell from the trees, orange butterflies flitted overhead, orange flowers bloomed in the distance.

The white noise coming from every direction blended into one ceaseless, distorted song under the rush of water around them. The breeze that kicked up near the stream was enough to carry the scent of smoke away, bringing back the familiar scent of water and dirt.

Lance started to shake soon enough, and Keith pulled them both out and dragged them back to the cave. He lit a fire, and the flash of sparks from the red stones made Lance flinch.

Keith sat beside him once the fire took off, letting their knees rest together. Lance’s hands twitched in his lap, so Keith reached over and entwined their fingers together. Lance twitched at the contact and turned to him.

Keith mouthed began to mouth words to him, slow and exaggerated so Lance couldn’t deny what he saw. His lips stretched wide and tall, his tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth.

 _It’s okay_.

Lance sighed and smiled, bringing their interlocked fingers up to his mouth. Keith rolled to his side and leaned forward, pulling his hand away so he could press his lips to Lance’s.  
__________

The following days turned into a routine, stable enough to keep them grounded but relaxing enough to allow them comfort. It wasn’t great, and the pretense of a vacation had long since faded, but it worked.

Lance slept a lot — they both did — but he was often plagued by nightmares and panic attacks, and the only thing that could calm him down was by holding Keith’s hand. 

Keith would sometimes get caught in his own spiral of stress and self-doubt, dozing off into blankness, only to be brought back by Lance smacking his cheeks into his hands.

They changed each other’s bandages, helped each other walk, kept each other alive. Their separate piles of grass were brought together into one big heap, and they fell asleep every night side by side, hand in hand.

Most conversation happened by writing in the dirt, but they integrated hand signals into more common expressions. Twirling a finger pointed downwards meant going to the stream to clean up. A curled hand tilted back meant getting water. Pressing fingertips together and bringing a hand to the mouth meant eating. Two fingers out and twisted together meant they would be right back. Drawing the fingers together and motioning down the face meant they should go to sleep.

Fingers interlocked and palms pressed together meant, _it’s okay_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Lance bby you're not doing so great huh
> 
> Only one chapter left! Unless I get overly ambitious, which definitely happens, if you couldn't tell by the fact that this chapter is very long. Probably not the best time for me to do that, since I just finished finals and wrote 11 essays in the past 2 days so I could have all day today for _more writing_. This one was more fun though. 
> 
> Anyways, [come hang out with me on tumblr](https://zurela.tumblr.com/) if you wanna yell at me for torturing Lance. You know, like I always do.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's finish this.

It seemed that the season was reaching its peak, with unknown changes looming around the corner. The forest was covered in more flowers than ever, a previously cool-toned landscape now popping with all sorts of colors. The orange ceiling of leaves now cast a radiant golden glow over every surface, bright enough to even infiltrate the dark cave during the high point of the day.

Life became louder. There were more creatures than ever, with the peeps of baby birds and chirrups of bugs bathing the forest in a nonstop, broken song. It was as if the planet itself was waking up, somehow bringing even more chaos to something already so alive.

Even Keith and Lance’s cave was starting to change. Leftover wood fibers and some strange sticky substance that Lance had obtained for his bomb were combined to make candles that lit the whole cave, as opposed to one large beacon from the center. The warmer weather had permeated the usually cold interior, and a number of butterflies could usually be found resting on the walls near Hunk Jr.

It was fair, then, that Keith didn’t hear it at first.

A whooshing sound kicked up, like the rush of the stream or the whistling wind through the trees. Amidst the cacophony, it was hardly even detectable, the only motionless drone behind a reckless wild. Almost like the cicadas back on Earth: eventually, it just became an unnoticed part of it all.

But that sound grew. And it grew, and grew, and grew, until eventually it was the only thing, demanding attention in the loudest way possible.

Keith was so startled by the rapidly intensifying noise that he didn’t even remember that Lance couldn’t hear it. The blood in his veins ran ice cold as he rushed outside, his heart pumping in his ears and driving him dizzy. 

_This couldn’t be happening._

They had blown up the ship. Lance had sacrificed his hearing, put his _life_ on the line, to keep them safe. Had they misjudged them, and the drones had actually found them? And instead of attacking, they had called for backup to come collect the lions, of _course_ they had, that ship couldn’t have held both lions, so they were just waiting and-

The gleam of the sun blinded Keith from seeing how large the arriving ships were, but it didn’t matter. There were multiple, probably more along the way, and there was nothing left to do. Neither of them were in any shape to fight or resist. All there was left was to run.

Just as he turned to retreat, clouds finally rolled over and blotted out the sun. Keith blinked away the aura in his eyes as the details of the ships in the sky became clear. A multitude of colors emerged, with glowing yellow lights and bulky metal.

Keith fell to his knees and grasped at his head. The other paladins had found them.

He couldn’t fight the tears that immediately filled his eyes and bubbled over, or the choking sobs that left him shaking in the dirt. They were really here. He rubbed at his eyes and stared into the sky, watching their descent with an unwavering stare in order to be certain that it wasn’t a hallucination. But there was no denying the shake of the ground beneath him, the squeal of rockets in the air. It was all real.

The lions landed side by side in the clearing along the hill; the black lion touched down first, with the green and yellow landing behind it. Whereas the Galra had chosen to just land and crush everything beneath it, the paladins opted for the open field near the stream, leaving them within eyesight from the cave.

Not a moment had passed since they landed and Keith was moving. A slow stumble upwards from the ground morphed into a clambering walk, which broke into a disjointed sprint. He hadn’t run this fast since the red lion woke up, since he had been tearing through the wilderness with no destination or sense of time.

Somehow, this run felt so much longer than that one.

The paladins emerged from their lions, bayards out and helmets on, searching the area for any threats. Keith paid no mind to the possible consequences of running towards them while they were on alert, not stopping until he had crashed into Shiro’s arms in a tight embrace. Shiro dropped his stance and grabbed Keith in return, holding him up as Keith devolved into more tears and incoherent rambling.

“It’s good to see you too,” Shiro said as he patted Keith on the back.

Pidge and Hunk had stowed their bayards as well, pulling their helmets off while they observed the strange planet around them. Pidge held up the scanner on her arm, taking measurements of the land and atmosphere before Keith could even speak.

“The air is totally safe,” she said, gazing across the landscape. “Actually, everything here seems safe, for the most part. You guys were lucky to have landed in a place like this.”

Keith stiffened. “Yeah, uh, we have definitely been lucky.”

Hunk beamed. “This place is just like Earth! Well, aside from the giant trees and the weird colors and the fact that there are no people or buildings. There are no people, right? Or, I guess, the space equivalent of people.”

Keith shook his head. “No, just bugs and plants, mostly. And a few bigger animals.”

“That’s awesome!” Hunk said with a thumbs up. “Lance probably loves this place, yeah?”

Keith’s stomach lurched again. “Umm...I guess…”

Shiro turned to him. “Where is Lance, anyways?”

“Oh.” Keith perked up. “Oh! I think he was sleeping when I heard you guys coming. Come on, we’ve been staying in a cave over here.”

“A cave?” Pidge asked as the three of them trailed behind him, the pain in his ankle flaring back to life after his sprint. “Why not stay in your lions?”

Keith grimaced. “They aren’t really in any shape for that. The crash messed them up pretty bad. How did you guys even find us? I thought they weren’t awake yet.”

Shiro smiled. “We didn’t track your lions, actually. We had been doing routine inspections around nearby planetary systems to look for you, since we had no way to trace you. Hunk had seen a giant black spot on this planet during his sweep of the galaxy, so we thought we would check it out.”

“So you didn’t even know if we were here?” Keith asked with a pointed glance. Had they really been that lucky, to have the others just stumble upon them by chance?

“Yup,” Hunk affirmed. “We were going to explore the planet and see what was up, but you cleared things up pretty quickly. What is that spot, anyways? Did you really do that much damage when you crashed?”

Keith blanched. “Not...exactly…”

His story was interrupted as they approached the mouth of the cave to find Lance clinging to one of the walls as he stumbled forward. His mouth dropped at the sight of the other paladins, but he remained leaned against the rock wall beside him.

“Lance!” Pidge and Hunk called in unison, but were interrupted by Keith rushing forward to grip Lance’s arms and hold him up. His eyes fluttered shut as he leaned against Keith.

“We can save the reunion for later,” Shiro intervened as he watched Lance and Keith move together. “For now, it looks like you guys could use some healing.”

Keith nodded, nudging Lance alert and nodding forward. Lance smiled and gave a thumbs up. Hunk and Shiro moved to help them, but were both waved away. As tired and beaten as they were, Lance and Keith needed to walk off this planet together.  
__________

Coran brought the red and blue lions into the castle while Hunk and Pidge returned to collect the other belongings from the cave. Keith managed to enforce how important it was that Hunk bring the yellow beetle in the cave back with them before Shiro forced him and Lance to the medical bay with Allura.

“Their injuries are mostly minor,” Allura explained in an attempt to maintain some sense of calm. “Lance should only need about a day, Keith probably less than that.”

Shiro nodded. “That’s good news.”

“After that,” Allura continued, “it would be in our best interest to move to a new location. We have spent a long time in this area, and it is only a matter of time until the Galra arrive.”

“The lions will need time for their repairs, too. And these two…” Shiro trailed off, gazing into Lance’s sleeping face behind the glass.

“Shiro,” Allura said as she moved beside him. “Eventually we have to move forward.”

“I know that,” Shiro agreed, though he couldn’t bring himself to tear his gaze away from the two activated cryopods. “But they were gone for more than four weeks. The way Keith was talking...something was definitely wrong.”

“I will do whatever it takes to keep us all safe in the meantime,” Allura promised.

“I know you will. Besides, we’ve held our own without them for this long. We will do what we can to protect our own.”

Allura frowned. “I just hope it is enough.”

Shiro placed a hand on her shoulder, though his clouded over gaze still remained straight ahead. “Me too.”  
__________

Keith emerged first, as predicted, and was immediately assaulted with questions and voices. Shiro finally intervened and ordered everyone out, sending Keith to bed and ordering Hunk to bring him food in the meantime. Though his time in the healing pod was relatively short, Keith’s thin frame and the dark circles under his eyes were evidence enough that there was still a lot of recovering to be done.

No one had seen even a glimpse of him for the rest of the day, to everyone’s surprise. Considering how clingy they had been with each other, it was a wonder that Keith hadn’t been around to see Lance, especially considering his poor sleeping habits.

The others, then, took it upon themselves to remain by Lance’s side until he emerged. Both of them had been quiet once they were found, but Lance had hardly made a sound. There was an unspoken agreement between the paladins to be careful not to overwhelm him once he woke up.

His pod opened less than a day after Keith’s had, sending him stumbling out into Hunk’s waiting arms. Lance immediately found himself being squeezed around the waist, gently but firmly, as the rumble of Hunk’s voice vibrated against Lance’s chest.

None of the words made it to Lance’s ears.

He pulled away and glanced up into Hunk’s grinning face, before looking over at the others. Shiro and Pidge stood side by side, with Allura and Coran hovering near the back of the room. They all smiled up at him, their lips moving in attempts to talk to him, or maybe explain something to him, but he couldn’t hear it, he couldn’t hear _any_ of it and-

Keith wasn’t there.

Lance turned to the pod next to him, the one that he had seen Shiro plant Keith in front of after they had changed into the cryopod suits, but it was empty. The others kept talking, their mouths kept moving, and bright smiles turned to confused looks turned to concerned stares. But still there were no words, just a wave of ringing and whirling that sounded like everything was underwater, only if the water had been replaced with lava.

Tears sprung to his eyes, not enough to spill onto his cheeks but enough to leave him feeling overwhelmed and frustrated and- where was Keith? Why wasn’t he here? Was he alright? Keith was the only one who could make things seem okay, who could help him understand in this world without words.

Lance gently shoved away from Hunk’s grasp, stumbling towards the door in a messy run and slipping away from the hands that came his way. He had to find Keith, he needed Keith _so much_.

Before he could even walk through the door, Lance tripped over his own feet and fell forward, directly into Keith’s arms.

He looked up, finally being faced with Keith’s soft smile, his determined gaze, the same look that told him night after night that everything was going to be alright. He braced his arms below Lance’s, pulling him upright and guiding him back to sit down in the med bay. The others stayed in place, watching as Keith worked with Lance. 

Lance had been hyperventilating, his hand in a death grip around Keith’s arm. Keith kept his gaze calm and solid, though the others could see the fear in his eyes. He began running his hands through Lance’s hair before pulling back and placing their foreheads together. Lance silently reached a hand out towards Keith, who met it in a strong grip, their fingers woven together.

He pulled away turned to the others. “Someone bring me something to write with — a pen and paper, a tablet, anything!”

“What-”

“Just do it!”

Pidge ran off while Keith turned back to Lance, one hand still clasped with his and another making a series of random gestures. He pointed to the others and began to speak; lowly and slowly so that the others couldn’t hear, with his mouth stretching in exaggerated and deliberate movements.

Pidge returned with her computer, which Keith grabbed and used to furiously type out a message before presenting it to Lance. Lance was still shaking, but he held Keith’s hand as he read it. The shaking in his shoulders began to subside, and the tension that snapped his spine into place loosened as he leaned forward into Keith’s chest.

Keith glanced back to the others. “He couldn’t hear you.”  
__________

The seven of them sat around the common room, with Lance leaned up against Keith as they both poked at bowls of food goo, not a word passing between them. Occasionally one of them would gesture, followed by a nod or shrug from the other. 

Keith turned to the others, glancing back at Lance once more before sighing. “Here’s the story. Both of our lions were wrecked in the crash. The blue lion is okay physically, but whatever she was hit with knocked everything out, including Lance’s helmet. The red lion is pretty damaged, and my helmet broke. We tried for a while to fix it, but eventually all we could really do was wait.”

Hunk nodded. “That crash site looked pretty rough, I’m not surprised-”

“That’s not where we crashed.”

Shiro cocked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“We didn’t crash there,” Keith repeated. “Our lions were in the other direction, they were out of commission before we even had the chance to move them. That black pit was from the explosion.”

“Explosion?!”

Keith nodded. “The Galra showed up a few days ago. We don’t think they knew we were there; I’m pretty sure of it by now, honestly, since they hadn’t come back. Based on all the drones around, it looks like they were just scoping out that planet as a colony. We never even saw any actual Galra, because we blew it up before they could even come out.”

Shiro nodded. “Good work. You did a good job of keeping yourselves safe.”

Keith scowled. “I didn’t do _anything_ , Lance is the one who did it. He had to shoot it in order for it to go off, so now he can’t hear.”

The three of them turned to Lance, who gave a small smile and shrugged in return, doing his best to infer what the others were talking about. Whatever Keith had said to warrant that look probably lacked a decent explanation, anyways.

Keith squeezed his hand again. “It’s been a few days, and it still hasn’t come back. Maybe the pods would have helped if we had gotten there sooner. At this point, though, we don’t...we don’t know if it’ll ever come back.”

The others went quiet. Hunk, ever the optimist, tried to lighten the situation. “At least the Galra were the worst of your problems! You guys did alright, the cave setup was nice. That planet could have been a lot more hostile.”

“It could have been,” Keith agreed, “but it still wasn’t easy. We had _nothing_. Lance drank contaminated water, so he was really sick through most of it. I messed up my ankle so we couldn’t really go anywhere for the last week. It was lucky that Lance knew how to fish and we found fire starters, or we would have starved and dehydrated early on. There were...a few close calls.”

Keith closed his eyes and leaned back with a deep breath, trying to regulate his quickening heartbeat. Lance turned to him in alarm, grabbing his arms and turning Keith to face him. He grabbed Keith’s face in his palms with a gentle slap.

“It’s okay,” he croaked, his first words since they had been found. “We’re back. We survived, you did okay. You saved us.”

Keith shook his head and pointed at Lance, who rolled his eyes. “Okay, we both saved each other. It doesn’t matter now, we’re back. Everyone is okay.”

The others watched in silence, alarmed by how close the two were even after emerging from the cryopods. Their initial closeness could have been written off as pure relief and excitement, but as they continued to interact, the true nature of it became more clear. Whatever had happened down there, whatever all the missing pieces of the story held...somewhere in there, these two had formed an intense bond.

Shiro felt a well of worry build up. It was good that they were getting along, especially since they had seemed to argue more than anyone. But in this state, that relationship could quickly turn to reliance and necessity. 

For such a loner, Keith developed stronger connections than maybe any of the others. It was hard to let people in, and so rarely did people stick around that he seemed to latch onto them once he believed they would stay. Whatever Lance had said or done back on that planet, it was enough to turn a rivalry into a strong, trusting relationship, solidified in less than a month. That alone was enough to leave Shiro reeling.

Maybe Shiro would never know the full story of what happened down there. Part of him didn’t know if he wanted to. But whatever it was, he was reluctant to question it. Even as worry gnawed away at his insides, there was something so reassuring about seeing Keith open himself up to others that left Shiro feeling warm and grateful.

“Well,” he announced, “I think that’s enough talking for now. Lance should really get some sleep, then we can reconvene tomorrow.”

“Hunk and I have to go start working on the lions, too,” Pidge agreed, and Hunk trailed behind her as they exited the common room.

Keith turned to Lance, drawing his fingers together as his hand slid down his face, and Lance nodded. They stood to leave together, but Shiro reached out and grabbed Keith’s shoulder.

“Can I talk to you for a minute? Alone?”

Keith turned to Lance, who grabbed his hand. Keith shook his head, pointing towards the door and holding out his open palm, mouthing _five minutes_. Lance sagged but nodded, trudging out of the room.

“What’s up?” Keith asked, reclining back into the couch as Shiro sat beside him.

“I just want to make sure everything is really okay,” he said.

Keith paused, fingers squeezing closed in his right hand before freezing and relaxing again. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Not right now, it’s not. It will be eventually.”

Shiro nodded and clapped a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “That’s alright. I get that things are weird right now. But I wanted to say I’m proud of you for how you’ve handled things, and for taking care of yourselves. You did a good job.”

Keith brushed Shiro’s hand away. “No, we didn’t.”

“What?”

“We didn’t do a good job,” Keith argued, “and we didn’t handle it — we _aren’t_ handling it. Just because we survived doesn’t mean everything was completely fine down there, Shiro.”

Shiro put his hands up. “I know that, I didn’t mean it like that. But you did survive, you got rid of the Galra-”

“Yeah,” Keith spat. “We got rid of them. We killed them all.”

Shiro froze. “Isn’t that a good thing? They would have found you and colonized the planet.”

The wall that held the Galra and the paladins apart cracked just a bit more, a black and white division mixing into each other to form an ocean of gray. Keith remembered — remembered learning of his own heritage and the Blade of Marmora, remembered the distrust Allura faced him with, remembered Lance retching and crying as the scent of burnt flesh still clung to the air.

“I don’t know. They would have caught us, you’re right. But we still killed them.” Keith paused to pull at the ends of his hair. “When I faced Zarkon, I thought I was ready to kill him. I think I was, at the time. But don’t you see it’s not that easy anymore? I am half-Galra. We’ve ended lives. Ones we didn’t even see or know before we decided it was our duty to kill them.”

“What are you saying?” Shiro asked. “Does that...will you still be able to-”

“This won’t hurt Voltron,” Keith interrupted. “I know what our job is, I know these things are for the greater good. But I can’t applaud myself for these things anymore, Shiro. You should have seen how much it hurt Lance to have killed them. He forced me to stay behind to keep me safe. I don’t think he just meant from the explosion; he was protecting me from doing that.”

The fingers in his hair turned to a fierce grip, and Shiro moved to place a hand on his back. “We survived. I didn’t think we would, but we did. Lance almost died, I almost died, we killed strangers and made stupid mistakes and even though we’re here now, I can’t let myself relax. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Shiro wrapped the rest of his arms around Keith, pulling him in against his side. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Keith fought weakly, tears trailing down his face. “That place was just like Earth. And we did things there that I never could have done back on Earth.”

“It wasn’t Earth,” Shiro assured with a squeeze. “We’re not on Earth.”

Keith choked on a sob. “But what’s the difference?”  
__________

Once Keith retreated for bed, eyes rimmed in red, Shiro called for the others to meet in the observation deck. Allura was already there when he arrived, and Coran arrived shortly after with Pidge and Hunk.

“We have a problem,” Shiro announced. “And I think we all know what it is.”

Pidge nodded. “They’re both on edge. Whatever happened down there wasn’t great.”

“It’s...complicated,” Shiro said. He didn’t want to divulge everything that Keith had shared, but the others needed to address some of those issues in order to find a way to deal with them. “Aside from Lance’s hearing and their trauma, I think some things have changed.”

“How so?” Allura asked with concern laced in her voice. “Will this impact Voltron?”

“I think so, but not in the way you think.” He struggled to put the feeling into words, to capture the look on Keith’s face as he cried. Though Shiro didn’t fully understand, his arguments had made some sense. The team had maintained a certain viewpoint for so long, a simple force that kept them moving in the face of destruction and war.

“Voltron should still be able to form,” he continued. “Lance and Keith will recover and be able to fly again. But I think their attitudes have changed, and they may have a point.”

Hunk fixed Shiro with a calculating stare. “How so?”

“I can’t explain it all myself.” Shiro hated to admit it, but even as the leader, there were some things he couldn’t make simple and concise. “But the reality of this all has finally started to sink in. Even though we are fighting for the safety of the universe, we are still doing unimaginable things. War is never simple, and I want you all to remember that. I want you to remember the lives you should have been leading back on Earth, or back on Altea, so that this doesn’t become familiar.”

“I don’t understand,” Allura interjected. “Why wouldn’t we want to become accustomed to this? We are doing what must be done.”

“You’re right, it does need to be done. But that doesn’t make it okay.”

He was met with blank stares, though the glint in Hunk’s eye told Shiro that he already understood some of these things.

Shiro sighed. “All of that aside, Lance and Keith still have a lot of recovering to do. Things aren’t going to be easy, and they may never be the same as they were. But we are a team, and we look out for each other. So long as we do that, we will be okay. Right?”

The others nodded. “Right.”  
__________

Keith stumbled into his room, exhaustion pulling his eyes shut. Despite the sleep he had gotten before Lance woke up, breaking down during his talk with Shiro had left him completely drained of energy. He slipped his jacket off, not bothering to change into anything comfier before collapsing into bed.

His eyes immediately fell shut, yet sleep did not come. The earlier fog of the cryopod had knocked him out instantly, but now Keith’s thoughts were racing. The past day hardly felt real.

The hum of energy moving through the castle was the only sound to permeate the silence, though it slowly drifted into an obscure background. No rustling wind, no crackling fire, no chirping bugs. Nothing.

Keith sat up in frustration, pulling at his hair again and glaring through the darkness. He stood to leave, no exact plan in mind but knowing he had to be somewhere else. Maybe some food from the kitchen would make him sleepy, or a quick sparring session could exhaust him. The door opened, however, to reveal Lance standing there with a fist raised to knock.

Keith froze, opening his mouth to speak before simply lifting a hand in a small wave. 

Lance smiled, but the sadness in his eyes remained. “Come sleep in my room,” he instructed.

Keith glanced away awkwardly, his cheeks heating up as they always did. “You-”

Lance grabbed his hand. The smile stayed, but the sadness in his eyes turned desperate. “Please.”

Keith deflated. “Okay.”

He let Lance drag him to the next room, opening the door to an already dim room. Lance brought the lights back up before pulling them both to his bed. He had yet to let go of Keith’s hand.

Keith pointed to his ear. “Anything?” he mouthed.

Lance shook his head. “Not really. It’s not completely blank anymore, which is a good sign, but I don’t know if it will ever come back fully.”

“Sorry,” Keith said, forgetting to mouth the words for Lance to see.

Lance shook his head again, then leaned forward to grab Keith’s hand, their palms pressed together with a message that Keith couldn’t try to fight. He squeezed Lance’s hand, the reassurance going both ways.

Lance stood to turn the lights back off, stumbling back towards the bed with his arms out. Keith grabbed him and helped guide him back, pushing himself against the wall as Lance climbed in next to him. It was still silent, and the strange surroundings still set Keith on edge, but the unease that had crawled up his spine had faded away.

Lance grabbed his hand again, rolling Keith towards him and gently pulling their lips together. They sat there, hand in hand, until both of them drifted off to sleep.

They both had to recover. They needed to address Lance’s deafness, and prepare for the battle against the Galra again. The trauma of the past, the daunting things to come; they all swirled together into one ugly mess. By no means should the situation be considered okay.

Yet together, alive, with their hands laced together, there was no denying it.

_It’s okay_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus concludes the longest story I've ever written! Where I managed to keep a consistent schedule and stay inspired through the whole thing. If you're sad about it ending, though, don't worry! I have a few one shot sequels planned that should hopefully be coming up soon.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who read this, especially to the people who have been leaving comments and stuck around since the beginning! You really help me keep writing, it makes me so happy to receive such nice feedback on this <3
> 
> That's it for this! If you wanna see more of my nonsense, [I have a tumblr](https://zurela.tumblr.com/) where I'll talk about what I'm working on next. Or if you have prompts or ideas for a story you wanna see in this series, I'd love to hear it! I'm not 1000% ready to let this weird little world go.
> 
> Thanks guys!!


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